


My Favorite Regular

by mattbellamy69



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 72,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4568775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattbellamy69/pseuds/mattbellamy69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The small corner pub that Castiel Novak works at is rather ordinary. It's packed on Friday nights, swamped with the usual and predictable bar crawlers that he loves to observe so much.<br/>Thursday nights, however, are a different story. The Thursday night attendees are what Castiel considers to be the most interesting, and he has a knack for figuring out each and every quirk those who come in contact with him possess. It's a skill he's honed over the years, perfected, and exercised repeatedly.<br/>But when Dean Winchester appears for the first time, Castiel is met with a challenge that he is more than eager to accept. Who is this Dean, and why is his voice so broken? Can he redeem his reputation as an excellent people reader, and help his new favorite regular in the process?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Game of Observation

I worked the late night shifts every Thursday night, and each time, without fail, it proved to be the most eventful and interesting of all the days of the week.

 

One may think that the Friday night shifts would pack the most excitement and the largest assortment of bar crawlers, but the Friday night customers at most every pub were rather predictable. In the occasional times I'd worked the shift, I'd taken note of the college fraternity boys, who traveled in loud and unruly packs, as if they were incapable of disbanding and making decisions themselves, as well as speaking within a reasonable volume. Following them were the temporarily innocent sorority girls, who also trailed behind their male counterparts so closely that I imagined their roles like mother and child. It always pained me to know that the giggling purity that was dwindling in their hands would soon be stripped from them, but there was little one could do to pull them apart from the frat boys with beer dribbling down their chin and supposedly sexual murmurings escaping their slurred lips. I never had understood the attraction.

 

Secondarily, there were the ever present middle aged men with uncomfortable neck-beards and unnerving dark eyes, forever cast down at the amber liquid in their glasses or bottles not out of shame or any true emotion, but simply because they were much too drunk to raise their line of vision any higher. To accompany them were the forty year old "failures,” as my co-workers referred to them as, while I simply called them misguided souls. They often times were women, with cheap makeup plastering their eyelids and cheeks while lipstick colored their lips in like a child doodling in their coloring books, and they hung around those middle aged men, who had no sense of time or self control, until they accomplished something and whoever was bartending on that unfortunate evening was left to pick up the spewed contents of their insides and clean up their dirty bottles.

 

But that was the Friday night shift, one that I found dry and rather boring. Thursday night I reserved for the excitement it brought and so I could take note of each and every newcomer I saw. I had something of a mental notebook swirling within my head with the pictures and names and sentences of those I’d been lucky enough to come in contact with, their statements, uttered in their most intoxicated forms, all written in my scrawled lettering, and I loved getting the chance to update it. I thought of those Thursday night lurkers as those who were truly troubled in life, such that they couldn't hold out just one more rendition of twenty-four hours to burst into the bar and drink away their problems, and in turn ended up being the most quirky of characters.

 

I hoped that I didn't look too strange when I watched those seated at the bar, their elbows pressed up against the black countered surface and eyes scanning the massive selection of drink that was carved out of the extensive woodwork on the wall behind me. I liked to analyze their body language, their movement, their personality based on the way they ate, drank, spoke, and looked at that oddly captivating wall of alcohol. It was a skill that had become highly developed the longer that I worked at the pub, and there had never been a person I couldn't figure out. I turned everyone who took a seat and ordered a drink from me in my hand, felt their ridges and learned their oddities, and stored the information like codes in my mind. It was a wondrously rewarding process.

 

And like I said, I hadn't failed. I knew or could know everyone I came in contact with. Broken hearts, broken families, broken minds, broken homes, and broken lives alike, I understood it all…

 

...until he started coming, clad in his intimidating leather jacket while the smell of intrigue, cologne, and sweaty kisses hanging over his head like a cumulonimbus cloud.

 

It was a cold, November Thursday when he'd first arrived. It was just after ten-thirty PM and I'd finished a rather awkward conversation with a startlingly old lady, who'd ordered nothing but straight Irish whiskey and complained about her husband's inability to unload the "damn dishwasher, which he hasn't repaired in six years," and I was cleaning out a fresh round of shot glasses for any of the daring and fun-seeking souls to arrive later that night with a thin rag.

 

My head shot up at the sound of the door opening, the bell attached the doorframe chiming for the seventeenth-dozen time that day. With his entrance came a weight into the room, like the constant chatter of the customers and the clinking of glasses subsided for a moment to take this presence in, and his heavy outer-garments I described earlier didn't help in the least. He blocked out the streetlight that usually seeped in from the door's windows with his shoulders and his shadow, which had originally painted itself across the immediate wooden floor beneath his feet, combined with the new resulting darkness.

 

What was most shocking, however, was his instantaneous eye contact with me. There was a rush of forest hazel and amber specks that met me head on, shooting into my own gaze that was a good twenty-five feet away from him with surprising accuracy, that nearly caught me by surprise. But I remained still and held my ground, halfway bent over, in the middle of placing the shot glasses underneath the bar where they belonged. Regardless of his unusual behavior, nothing was entirely unusual on Thursday nights, so I chalked the incident up as another thing to remember, expect, and analyze.

 

Soon after his arrival, the chatter and the clinking resumed without further interruptions and the sudden air of tension blew away for a short while. I believe the old woman continued on her whiskey-fueled rant about dirty dishes, but I was a little too occupied with the man walking steadily towards the bar. His jacket, unzipped with a plain tee shirt underneath, the collar lowly cut to reveal a small portion of his tan chest area, covering his middle, flopped back and forth with each step he took, and each one of those steps carried purpose, much more purpose than the usual bar crawlers possessed. But, in all honesty, any purpose at all was more than what they had.

 

He sat down four seats away from the old woman, so two away from where I was stationed behind the bar, and his elbows slammed against the counter. The impact caused the other glasses seated on the surface to quake slightly, and I knew I had my work cut out for me. Often times those who paid the pub a visit did not want to be understood and liked to drape themselves in what they thought was mystery, but the added effort only made them more transparent. I finished my business with the woman, as politely as possible, and eventually made my way over to the newcomer.

 

I cleared my throat to alert him that I was there and ready to engage in conversation with him, but the action earned me no acknowledgment or reciprocation, so I merely carried on with my usual procedure.

 

"Good evening…what'll you have?"

 

I saw his tongue flick over and around his lips, as if he was collecting his choice of words, while his eyes were still trained everywhere but on my own.

 

"Double scotch, no ice."

 

I couldn't help but notice how blatantly angry he seemed. The emotion was radiating off of his stern voice yet quaking and trembling hands, which were now clasped together on the counter, fingers interlocked with one another, and in the way he still refused to look up at me. While I didn't think he was a partaker in "common courtesy," I would've assumed he would want to show me he meant business, and a mere gaze from his earthy eyes, harsh brow, and sharp jawline would've almost willed me into silence. Almost.

 

"Not a problem," I replied with a small smile, the one my boss taught me on my first day that had become muscle memory to my face, and went about my business of serving the angry and leathery customer. And while I went to work, I swear I could hear his very breath move in and out of his slightly parted lips. Something had seriously gotten under his skin.

 

Once I finished the task and made the simpler drink the newcomer asked for, I slid it to him across the counter and watched, intently, as his eyes flicked upwards to where it had landed. His hand extended forward and out of the fold it had found itself in moments before, fingers wrapping around the clear glass and bringing it to his mouth. Meanwhile, I fought the urge to sigh myself, much like he had, because of his lack of a thank you. The only thing he seemed to be interested in, however, was gulping down the toxic liquid at an alarmingly quick pace, one that I found it hard to keep up with.

 

And that pace didn't cease, either. The minutes turned to hours and the amount of money this man was practically throwing at me kept increasing, like the lack of color across his progressively more distressed face. Throughout that night, from the time he entered the pub until very early that morning, near closing time, I watched the old dishwasher lady come and go, along with a couple both clad in overalls who smelled of cow dung, seven men who all had come from another pub just down the street and who appeared to belong to some group I didn't want to know about, a young woman in a lavish dress who I assumed was underage, and on any other day I would've called her out on how obviously fake and illegal her ID was, but even the law I was under orders to so strictly follow in my line of work was hardly a match for the level of captivation that mystery man inspired within me.

 

As the time passed, I watched his shoulders slump inward more, his eyes focus less, and his fingers decrease in the severity of their grasp of the several glasses and bottles he went through. I'd kept track, of course, in hopes of not causing him harm or putting him in danger by being such an enabler, but I couldn't help but feel that sting of wonder coarse straight through me. What in the world could be driving him to drink himself into oblivion? What could've possibly occurred in his life that would need the burn of alcohol and stupid thought to relieve or fill it? What hole was there to patch up, and who had dug it?

 

For the first time in as many Thursday nights that I could remember, I could not bring myself to ask him any of those questions.

 

Maybe it was the way he still refrained from making anymore eye contact with me after that initial moment of arrival, or the way he was simply wolfing down frightening amounts of burning alcohol without so much as a single flinch, the only movement being his throat as it contracted along with the liquid it pushed into his damaged system, or perhaps it was just the way he carried himself, and how I watched the walls he had around him crumble with every sip and with every breath in between. I was used to watching the process, I was accustomed to seeing the barriers and layers of every kind of person under the sun being peeled back, but there was certainly something different in this one. There was something else trapped within and behind those layers that even me, the Thursday night bartender, had never experienced before.

 

My rather draining thoughts and theories were temporarily cut short, however, when my boss appeared from somewhere in the kitchen and walked behind the bar, face a little sweaty and an apron spotted with brown and an unsettling yellow tied around his waist, and signaled to me with a wave of his hand.

 

"Ay, Castiel, can you lock up for the night?" He asked me, removing a loud pair of keys from his jeans' pocket and jingling them in his hand as he awaited my response. I wasn't entirely sure what he thought I would say, however, seeing as though I didn't have much of a choice.

 

"Yes, of course," I answered. He gave me a grateful nod and a smile and launched the keys into the air, a sight that caused more anxiety to well up in my chest than what I assumed would be the normal amount. I had to focus my eyes and the rest of my senses tightly on the object flying across the short distance between me and my boss and will my hands upward, following the silvery metal pieces until they were close enough to capture between my fingers.

 

I acted, finally, after waiting until the very last second. I moved my arms forward and swung both of my hands inward and around what I hoped would be the keys, but when I felt their metal surface scratch against my fingertips and slide past, I knew I'd failed in my painfully basic mission. My senses faded in their intensity, my arms began falling back to my sides, and I watched with a now disheartened gaze as the keys clattered to the wooden floor with a harsh clang.

 

I would've scrambled downward at a breakneck pace to retrieve them, blurted out a rather incomprehensible apology to my boss for my clumsiness, only to watch him chuckle, roll his own eyes and leave, but there was another presence nearby, and their line of vision was burning its way into the back of my head. So as I found myself crouching down to pick up the pieces of my failed mission that lay sprawled out on the hardwood, I turned my neck just under ninety degrees to sneak the faintest of glances at the new-coming, alcohol-consuming extraordinaire in the few half seconds that I had to do so, and I was met with what I wasn't sure was a triumph or something to be hopelessly alarmed at:

 

He was staring right back at me.

 

There was barely a millisecond of time where I was met with two wildlife green eyes staring back at my own with an intensity I had never encountered before. It made my skin crawl and my breath catch for a moment within my chest, but then it was gone. His vision turned away as quickly as it had shifted to my neck and rear end of my skull and I'd hardly had enough time to process it, but it had been there. It had graced the back of my head. It was as plain as the look of wonder my face had contorted into, combined with my embarrassment at dropping the keys.

 

I soon regained my stance and stuffed the keys into my pants' pocket as my boss gave me one last wave of a goodbye and disappeared out the back door, leaving me nearly completely alone in the almost vacant pub. The only other presences I was sharing oxygen with were the last of those rather strange, cult-invested men and the mystery man stationed a few feet away, and the others were just about to walk out the door. In a matter of moments it would be the mystery man and myself.

 

As the other two entities walked out the door, causing that same bell to give a jingle that now rang harshly in my ears, since the usual hop and bustle of the pub had died down at that late hour, my eyes flicked upward to the clock above my head and I read the time: 1:58 AM. We closed in two minutes, and I knew I was now obligated to cut the mystery man off and ask for his method of payment for the last couple drinks.

 

I began inching my forward, my steps along the dark hardwood floor small and helpless, until I was sure all the fiddling with the object in my pocket and the wandering of my eyes in the world couldn't prevent him from noticing my presence advancing towards him. I could never been one-hundred percent sure, however, since he still refused to meet my eyes head on. I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t beginning to drive me crazy.

 

Eventually I made my way over to him, placed my hands on the bar's edge for support and in an attempt to look casual, and cleared my throat to gain his attention. I wasn't sure if it worked, of course, but hoped that the glass was half-full that evening and tried my luck by speaking

 

"Excuse me…sir, I'm afraid that I have to close up now…"

 

All my statement was met with was a rough grunt and the sudden shifting of his body on the barstool. I watched, with rather awkward captivation and curiosity may I add, as the mystery man dug into his leather jacket's coat pocket and removed an equally as leathery wallet, with the sides fraying and the many layers of the thick material peeling off the edges. It looked like it had undergone many years of wear and tear, just like he appeared to have.

 

He flicked open the front flap without so much as a glance upward and went digging for either cash or a credit card, but while he did so, I found myself staring much too intently at another card that was peeking up from a pocket opposite the one he was searching through. The top half of this mystery man's driver's license was sticking up ever so slightly, just enough to allow me to see a crucial part of his unknown identity that had been pressing my mind so…his name.

 

Dean S. Winchester.

 

Just as quickly as the ID had appeared, it vanished and was slid back into its designated pocket inside his ages wallet as this Dean character slapped down the necessary amount of cash needed to pay for the last couple beverages he'd consumed. In fact, the wad of money he'd forcefully placed on the counter was about five dollars more than what was required, and as I carefully took the green slips of paper in my hands and began counting out the change, I was alarmed for a second time in no longer than a minute and a half…

 

"Keep the change."

 

He'd spoken.

 

Dean's voice sounded just like he should have, in my opinion after having invasively stared at him for the past few hours or so. It was deep and rough around the edges, like its noise was reverberating around in his chest and rasping as it did so, but no amount of gruffness could take away from the firm and present intent his speech had. I imagined, from those three words, that whatever Dean S. Winchester said was always taken seriously.

 

Soon, however, I remembered that I had to speak as well, and threw out some sort of courteous reply that I could come up with on the spot. All the skills my boss had taught me so long ago when I'd first started working at that small corner pub, like the small smile of politeness now engrained into my very face, were escaping me and it was sending my mind into an unnatural panic mode.

 

"Oh-oh, are you sure? It's a whole four dollars and seven cents…"

 

Dean simply shook his head no, further embedding his request for me to keep the excess money, and arose from the barstool he'd been practically glued to all night. Upon rising up and standing in his full height, I realized just how massive and intimidating his form truly was. Dean was well over six foot, with shoulders broad and clad in what I was beginning to wonder was an irremovable leather jacket, and his brow was cast in the dark shadows from the dimmed lights above. I measured a measly five-foot-ten-inches, and my shoulders' width was hardly comparable to his literal wingspan.

 

Before the intimidation being posed onto me from the simple action of him standing up was able to get well inside my head, Dean turned around slowly on his heels and began approaching the door. His heavy, weighted, and now slightly clumsy footsteps sent sturdy creaks coursing through the wooden floor beneath his booted feet and the dips and pauses he took as he advanced towards the exit, caused by his mass consumption of alcohol, would've caused me to smile, perhaps, if I hadn't found myself so captivated.

 

That captivation was interrupted, however, with a mild sense of concern, seeing as though he was barely able to keep himself standing straight and upright. I called out to him again, for the fourth time that night, and my statement earned me his second response.

 

"Do you need me to call a taxi?" I inquired anxiously. He definitely was not fit to drive.

 

Dean paused at the door as his right arm fell onto the frame for support. In a long, drawn out movement, he turned his figure around once more to face me, and the face I was met with was rather shocking and drastically different from its appearance at the start of that long night. 

 

He looked sad, distressed, and very much broken and exposed. The angry had transformed into a raw kind of helplessness, the side effect most borderline, or full-blown, alcoholics, tended to forget about in my experience. His face hung loosely, unable to contain any true emotion in his face other than that lost and bored kind of depression, and I could only imagine what the waves and waves of intoxication looked like as they swirled inside of him. Certainly what was on the outside was nothing compared to within.

 

I was so caught up in the magnitude of Dean Winchester’s changed appearance that I nearly missed his response as he called out to me, the syllable of his one word response fading into a murmur and accompanied by a small wave of the hand,

 

“Nah…”

 

I could feel my throat tense, constrict with guilt yet a polite kind of submission. I highly doubted he would listen to anymore pestering, no matter how much sincere concern I showed for his wellbeing and ability to successfully return home. The way his loose, stumbling fingers fumbled dependently on the door knob, as if it was the only thing holding his shaking knees upright, only furthered my theory. He was definitely leaving and wanted no assistance in doing so.

 

I swallowed the hodgepodge of emotions that accumulated somewhere just below the curve of my own throat and nodded my head rather gravely. 

 

“Oh...alright. I hope you get home safely, Dean.”

 

Using Dean’s name was purposeful. I wanted to get a reaction, at least some spark of interest and excite the jumpstart his system and not only give me the acknowledgement I so oddly wanted of the broken man, but to judge the state of his mind in full. His defenses had been so airtight and tall a few hours ago, but if he failed to notice the mention of his own name, a detail Dean Winchester had intentionally hidden under lock and key from me, then I would have true reason to be concerned. 

 

Yet, even from my spot behind the bar that good twenty-five feet away, I caught the spark of recognition alight his dazed eyes, and a slight escape of relieved breath blew past my lips. Dean cocked his head to one side, squinted his deep brow, and made an expression emulating strained thought. I suppose the strain was too much on his intoxicated brain, however, and he soon let the loss of his so well-kept secret slide with a shake of his head. Soon after he turned around clumsily on his heels and exited the pub, letting in a gust of cold air as he did so that blew straight into my direction and ruffled the few strands of hair that had come loose atop my head. 

 

The bell attached to the front door gave one last chime, the chime of closing and the chime of rest, before I was wrapped up in a firm silence of solitude. There was no creak of stressed floorboards under heavy feet, the clinking of beer bottle necks on beer bottle necks had ceased, the delirious laughter was but a mere ringing in my ears, and the poor, lonely, old lady with the dishwasher-neglecting husband’s seat suddenly looked painfully vacant and quiet. But, feeling the sticky surface of the bar underneath my drumming fingers, fingers drumming in thought, I noticed that I could still hear one sound echoing somewhere in my mind, a place that I couldn’t identify. 

 

“Keep the change.”

 

Dean Winchester’s voice came from deep within his chest, caught gravel and was scratched up in the process once it reached his throat, and the way his lips formed around the individual words allowed for much mumbling and several speech imperfections. Perhaps that it was just the drunken version, though one couldn’t deny the sound’s tremble. The way it came out in pieces only furthered my assumption: he was broken. Parts of him were in shattered fragments and instead of alcohol being the glue he so desperately needed and searched for, it merely separated the fragments farther until some were lost and deemed irreplaceable. 

 

I spent ages running it over in my head, even as I wiped the sticky away from the bar and made my rounds throughout the pub to clear away the remaining shrapnel from the night. I almost chuckled to myself as I bent underneath a table to retrieve several carelessly discarded napkins from the floor at how intensely captivated I was by this Thursday-bar-crawler, because they typically came and gone like passing scenery, scenery that just happened to inexplicably odd. 

 

Gripping the dirty papers in one tentative hand, I was making my way over to the trash bin when it hit me. Dean Winchester was far more than passing scenery. While he did possess the odd quality all those before him did, it wasn’t an odd that I could understand. I knew he was broken, I knew his voice, with its rumble yet worrisome tremble, and I knew he wasn’t the kind to share parts of him or his life. I also knew his name, but nothing else. I didn’t even know whether or not there was a wife at home, pestering him about their damned kitchen appliance that needed repairing. 

 

I’d failed in my favorite game of learning the Thursday night tragedies’ stories and troubles, and Dean Winchester had brought upon that loss. I hadn’t been able to learn his story and analyze the reasons behind his presence and his volley of drinks, and I could barely even bring him to speak as he threw back the contents of each glass and bottle. 

 

I’d often imagined what I would do if I ever lost, who would bring the loss upon me, and what I would do to redeem myself. The situation at hand was not one that I expected, of course, and as I grabbed my coat from the hanger nearby the back exit, draping its khaki length across my shoulders, I made an important decision. I would not feel bad about the defeat, but I would embrace it. I would challenge it, and, in doing so, I would challenge Dean Winchester in the longest game yet. 

 

I would learn the story behind the rumble of his voice, the flecks in his eyes, the freckles along his cheeks, the silence in his bones, and the secrecy etched into his very programming no matter how long it took. The time limit I was usually confined to, one singular night, would not apply to this round of the game , which relieved the deal of stress losing would usually inspire and replaced it with fascination, excitement, and a fiery determination. 

 

With one final look at the now dark and vacant pub, for I had turned off the lights and made yet another check for any possible intruders, unable to turn off my impenetrable paranoia, I closed the door and let it lock behind me. Within a few moments of walking towards my car, seated in the rear employee parking lot, I noticed the new spring in my step and the still, ever-present voice in my head, speaking to me like a song stuck in my head, but the meaning of the tune just kept eluding me. The drive home was full of the noise, it echoed off of my shower’s walls, and it played behind my eyes and seeped into my dreams, and I knew I was in far too deep. Redemption was definite. Victory was an absolute.

Game on, Dean Winchester.


	2. Cohesively Broken

 

***

 

“I just don’t see what his point is, you know? His motivation?”

 

“I mean, I know we’ve had our rough patches for the past few months, er...years, maybe, but I was willing to work through it. I was willing to put the effort in!”

 

“Had I not walked in on them...on them...you know, doing that, I would’ve been under the impression that he was willing, too!”

 

“Can you believe the indecency? The...the idiocy?”

 

I could believe it, actually. The story’s general summary was not one that I was unfamiliar with and it didn’t take a great deal of thought or translation to understand what she was telling me, despite her coded language and unwillingness to truly admit just what she’d walked in on her husband doing. The details, however, was where the excitement lay. That’s where my ears had caught interest and, in turn, my mind caught sympathy. 

 

The young woman, whom I’d been so intently listening to, hung her full head of midnight hair in shame, embarrassment maybe, as her grip on her wine glass faltered and her fingers fell. I paused in my cleaning of shot glasses to give her a long, sad, yet supportive gaze in hopes it was what she was in need of at the time. I found that, occasionally, my responses to people’s despair or inner turmoil were considered blunt, slightly insensitive, when I truly was just unaware as to what the correct reply was. A knack for observation did not always imply a similar knack for sociability. 

 

“And look at me now!” she exclaimed, her eyes blurry with tears and dripping mascara. “Ranting off about my life’s problems to some stranger bartender…”

 

“I-I don’t mind,” I stammered, noting how my voice was awkwardly monotone. I needed to work on that. 

 

The young woman smiled, a smile full of submission and emulating an injured spirit, and I felt it rather challenging to meet her gaze, especially when I knew there wasn’t much I could do to ease her pain. 

 

“Oh, you’re obligated to say that. But I do appreciate you listening,” She answered, yet I watched yet again as another wave of hysterics took over. She placed her head in her hands before exclaiming,

 

“But come on! With my boss? My male boss?”

 

Again, the details were where the excitement lay. Only on Thursday night would a young housewife, with sa lot of life left in her, come to the pub, drink out her feelings with glass after glass of merlot, and despair over her cheating husband who happened to have a lot more secrets than he’d ever let on. They’d been married seven years, she’d told me, and in those seven years she never suspected anything. And that’s why I was hearing her story then, relishing in its element of surprise yet still trying to find the adequate balance of empathy and creepy interest. 

 

Within a few minutes she’d finished her piece and I left her to dwell in her own thoughts with another glass of wine. The look of exhaustion gave me reason to believe she was through telling the “stranger bartender” her “life’s problems.” I suppose she wasn’t much of a stranger to me, at that point in time, though my identity and life still eluded her. I liked to keep it that way. 

 

She wasn’t that hard of a puzzle to fit together. She was obviously living a lifestyle close to, if not already, luxury. I estimated that she was in her mid-fourties, a time in which dying hair was popular, and there were very few people with hair as raven-shaded as hers, so she’d been an avid partaker in hair styling. Her face was dolled up with makeup, an example being her running mascara, and she was wearing a white, lace blouse. I would’ve just assumed she’d been coming from a meeting of some import, but underneath her blouse and along her legs were jeans, so she simply had the money to present herself well. And, of course, she’d told me all about their nice suburban home, deluxe-model cars, and the rest of the suburban-life stereotype that I’d come to know so well. With such a life came scandal-”everyone knows that the suburbs are a nasty, secret-ridden place,” my boss once told me in a laugh-so the puzzle pieces fit well. Easily. And in one night. 

 

I had found myself distracted throughout her analysis, however. There had been an undermining thought not relating to her cheating and “no longer entirely straight” husband, a thought that had been badgering my mind for exactly a week, bouncing in and around the walls of my mind until I found my eyes permanently plastered on the pub’s front door, waiting for its bell to ring and to see who was entering. For the first time in as long as my memory could recall, I was expecting someone on a Thursday night full of unexpecteds. I had the image of their face clear in my head, the smell of their diluted cologne teasing my noise, and the sound of their iconic voice still torturing my eardrums. 

 

“Everything alright, Castiel?”

 

The contrast of my co-worker’s voice versus the one I was remembering in my head was sudden and startled me slightly, causing me to nearly drop the shot glass that I’d resumed cleaning after my time with the heartbroken, suburban-scandal woman had ended. Thankfully, my clumsiness didn’t strike me down again and had mercy, allowing me to place the glass safely under the bar and to turn around to face the source of the contrasting voice. This one was much more lively, airborne, and I enjoyed hearing it, despite the times its sudden appearance created rather embarrassing situations. 

 

“Yes, Charlie, I’m alright,” I replied, sending the source of the voice the most sincere of smiles and head-nods. 

 

Charlie shot me her own kind of smile, one full of knowing and amusement, and I often found myself subject to that gaze. I pushed its somewhat demeaning nature aside as she approached me, dropping that same lively voice down to something resembling a whisper. 

 

“Interested in little miss mascara and hair-dye over there?” She taunted, and even though I felt a small amount of pride for knowing that the lady’s hair had, in fact, been dyed, I shook my head no quickly, as if the speed would further imply my answer. 

 

“Of-of course not, I was just listening to her story, that’s all,” I answered honestly. Charlie didn’t seem to buy it.

 

“Her story? And what would that be?”

 

“Her husband of seven years, a wealthy prosecutor who drives a red convertible, was sleeping with her male boss,” I stated, and judging by the apallment streaking across Charlie’s face, my voice had been too matter-of-fact-like, as it had been before, and I scolded myself for forgetting to improve. 

 

“Holy shit, really? That’s insane!”

 

“I found it rather sad,” I murmured with a small shrug of my shoulders, squeezing out of the way as Charlie craned her head around my front to get a look at the subject in question, allowing me to get a faceful of her electric red hair. She didn’t seem to share in my sympathy, seeing as though her eyes were alive with curiosity and a twisted kind of humour. 

 

“Nah, don’t feel bad for the lady. If the husband cheated, especially with a dude, it obviously wasn’t meant to be between them.”

 

I was confused by that statement, the emotion made visible by my habitual turn of my head to the left. Charlie caught the action and grinned yet again, amused by my lack of understanding but she explained her reasoning, thankfully. 

 

“If the husband cheated on her, he didn’t feel love between him and her like he should’ve. It wasn’t real then, ya know?”

 

I didn’t know. The lady obviously felt some kind of emotion for the man, or her makeup wouldn’t be running and she wouldn’t be on her fifth glass of wine with tears in her eyes. I gave the lady one last look and, again, couldn’t understand her emotion if the love wasn’t real. 

 

Charlie sighed and continued her piece as she leaned up against the bar. I watched her fling a rag that had been clutched in her hand over her shoulder. 

 

“Yeah, she’s obviously messed up about it. She’s reevaluating her relationship, figurin’ out what went wrong. She’ll find someone else though, we all do. Someone that loves her for real, and so will her husband.”

 

“They will? How can you be so sure?”

 

Again with the monotone voice, but I couldn’t help it. My blatant curiosity beat the need to be socially normal/acceptable. I watched Charlie’s humoured grin shift into something a bit deeper and she looked at me like she was teaching me a life lesson all about love, but I couldn’t imagine what. If a homosexual, cheating husband and a false raven-haired suburban wife who needed to sort out her priorities was all love was, then I wasn’t entirely interested.

 

“C’mon Cas, you’ve never heard of soulmates? People that are destined to be in love, like they were put on this Earth solely to find the other person?”

 

“I thought that was just a fictional concept,” I admitted. 

 

“Well yeah, chick-flicks butcher it,” she agreed, rolling her eyes. “but there is some truth to the idea, at least I think so. I like to think that we all have someone waiting out there. Even the whole meeting by chance, like in the rain, in a cab, and- hell, even in a bar!” She spread her arms open wide and motioned toward the scenery around us. It hardly seemed like the place for two people destined for love to meet for the first time; it could take a large amount of the dramatic effect away.

 

“And how their eyes are supposed to lock on each others’,” She continued, batting her eyelashes in my direction and doing her best and most outlandish impression of all the overly flirtatious women we saw daily surfing and searching the bar for new victims. I’d be lying if I said that Charlie’s imitation didn’t make me chuckle, even just a little bit.

 

“All the way down to how their hearts stop in the chest, just for a moment,” her hands fluttered to her chest, like she was weak with the emotions being described, and fluttered her eyes in an attempt to look faint with love. It earned a small bout of laughter from the two of us, but there was no denying her belief in the concept of soulmates. While I found it rather trivial, outlandish even, I didn’t want to rain to harshly on her parade, and I still wanted to know more. 

 

“You don’t think the lady and her husband’s eyes ever locked?” I inquired further, breaking the laugh Charlie found herself in the middle of that was causing her hair to fall into her face and set her blue eyes alight with a spurt of joy. 

 

“If my theory about soulmates is correct then...no. They never did. Maybe they thought they did, but it wasn’t real.”

 

I was growing frustrated with the large gaps in her reasoning, and maybe I was dwelling to intently on a matter that was just meant to swallowed, but I couldn’t fight the fiery, curious inkling dinging somewhere in the back of my mind like that damned front door’s bell.

 

The bell.

 

I’d forgotten!

 

“Well, how are you supposed to know if the love is real or not?” I asked, now off-handedly as I scanned the pub for the object of my earlier search, the object of my distraction during the suburban lady’s saddening story. I couldn’t have missed it, could I? The thought sent worried, stressed chills up and down my exposed arms. 

 

“God Cas, you really need to watch a few shitty movies. Remind me to lend you a copy of The Notebook or somethin’ okay?” Charlie chuckled as she began to wipe down the end of the bar opposite me in what I assumed to be an attempt to look busy. I gave her some half-hearted okay, eager to hear her true response to my question but still running my eyes over every table, every booth, every occupied corner, and every barstool. 

 

“You’re just supposed to know, I guess. The feeling is supposed to just hit you, and you just know.”

Her reply was said with a kind of faraway finality, a secret want that she’d been harboring for who knows how long. Once my scan of the pub proved fruitless, the figure I’d been desperately looking for not appearing indoors, I turned back to Charlie with raised eyebrows and a question,

 

“Has it ever hit you?”

 

Charlie sighed deeply, the breath blowing a few strands of her hair that had fallen in front of her face during her speech into the air before they fluttered back down to their original, inconvenient post. Eventually she shook her head no, but there wasn’t any sadness in her expression, just hope. Hope that it would happen one of these days. 

 

“Nope, not yet. Still lookin’ for the right gal.”

 

She gave me one last smile, one that I imagined should be in sample photographs for picture frames it was so bright and plainly cheerful, before I was pulled forcefully from the peaceful reality of conversation by a ring from the opposite end of the pub. It was an iconic ring, one that sent more chills up and down my bare arms, but these chills weren’t out of worry. They were out of knowledge, of the sure feeling that someone of import had entered the bar.

 

Slowly- very, very slowly- my figure turned from Charlie’s picture-perfect beam to a much gloomier, darker, and sadder picture: a six foot-something tall frame, broad shoulders clad in leather, with a head of dusty, light brown hair that hung low in an attempt to pass unnoticed and under the radar of whoever else happened to be staring at the door. I’m not sure whether he was successfully able to do so in regards to the rest of the pub’s attendants, but he’d failed in regards to me. 

 

I’d touched down on his figure within seconds, tuning out the rest of the hustle and bustle around me, and watched him navigate through the large expanse of people and drink, making his way for the bar like he had exactly one week ago. It had been a torturous week, to say the least, full of tense waiting to see if the illusive Dean Winchester would show, mixed with an impending doubt that I was simply blowing his oddity and unusualness way out of proportion. But seeing him make his heavy, weighted way across the hardwood floor and flop himself into the barstool quickly eliminated those doubts and refueled that old sense of excitement that the seven days of wait had almost diminished entirely. 

 

I had a game to win, and my opponent was this mind-boggling Dean Winchester who looked about ready to order. 

 

Charlie nudged me from behind, her beam gone and replaced with a raised eyebrow and an inquisitive look, and I made a mental note to be more inconspicuous about my own inquiries. 

 

“Whoa, what’s wrong?” She asked, scanning the same bar I’d been moments before, looking for the source of my obvious mood change. 

 

“N-nothing, I just...have another customer.”

 

“Well is his face covered in blood or something? You’re lookin’ like you’ve just seen a-”

 

She must’ve seen him. Judging by the way her eyes fell still and her face contorted into that of a smirk, one that left me painfully nervous, she had a head full of assumptions and wonders that I could surely do without. But that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t be subject to them anyways. 

 

Charlie nodded her head in Dean’s direction with both of her eyebrows now raised high into her head. She placed a hand on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, her face dangerously close to mine, and I noticed her breath was overtaken by the mint gum locked in her jaws. If her comments weren’t overwhelming enough, the scent surely was.

 

“Ah, I see, Novak. You’re not interested in that suburban lady at all!” She chortled. 

 

“Of course I’m not interest-” I retorted, temporarily oblivious to her intentions and the meaning behind her words. 

 

“You’re not interested in little miss broken dreams and too much wine because you’re into sir leather- jacket-and-dangerous-jawline!”

 

Perhaps it would’ve helped my case more if I hadn’t been able to identify Dean Winchester through Charlie’s horribly blunt nickname, but I could immediately pinpoint the very features in which she was speaking of-and yes, Dean Winchester had a fantastically stern jawline-but I was bound and determined to fight her implications and giggling jokes. 

 

“I believe you’re mistaken, Charlie,” I began rather desperately, struggling once again to control the tone of my own voice. “ I just recognize him from last week, that’s all…”

 

Charlie rolled her eyes, twinkling blue lighting up with the gleam of mischief and mocking that was sure to come quickly after. “I recognize at least three people from last week that are here right now, but you don’t see me going all googly-eyed for them. You’re into him.”

 

“I am not into him, Charlie!” I exclaimed, a little too loudly. The moment the words passed my lips, every muscle in my body seemed to tense in fear of the conversation catching the subject’s attention, but with a millisecond glance in his direction, I saw him still in his painful silence, scrolling through his cellphone. I knew I needed to go and get him a drink, be a courteous bartender and do my job, but Charlie was being much too persistent and the beating in my chest made so much noise he was sure to hear it if I approached him.

 

“You know I don’t judge. Hell, I have no room to judge-”

 

I cut her off by placing a few more inches of distance between us and sending her the most intimidating stare I could, given my current mental state. Any other day I would be able to suffer through her jokes, maybe even enjoy them to an extent, but I had a mission that needed carrying out. A game that needed to be won as soon as possible.

 

Thankfully, Charlie caught on and backed away, hands raised in, still, a rather amused form of surrender. 

 

“Okay, okay, I won’t bother you anymore,” She replied, earning a sigh of relief from my own mouth. Swiftly and with ease she adjusted the apron tied around her waist, fixed the few strands of fallen hair, and began approaching the door to the kitchen, though I couldn’t help but notice her slowed pace and grin. She wasn’t totally through.

 

“I’ll just leave you guys to it, then.”

 

And before I could protest, scold her, or voice any amount of my exasperation, she disappeared behind the doors along with the sound of her lighthearted laugh, carrying away like a beacon of all things annoying yet impossibly loveable. As much as Charlie drove me up every wall in remote proximity to her, working would surely not be the same without her. 

 

I had little time to dwell on our odd friendship though, because I had a job to do and I felt guilty for ignoring Dean for so long. For what is was worth, however, he probably wouldn’t have been very happy to hear our conversation if it had continued on while I served him, so I’d chosen the best of a bad situation. But now there were no more reasons to avoid him, no more secret opportunities to gaze at and analyze him from afar, and no more time to busy myself with other mindless activities. I needed to truly interact with Dean Winchester, and once the decade long walk to where he was seated ended, I forced a few words of apology and politeness from my throat. 

 

“Hello, I apologize for the wait there...what’ll you have?” The statement was highlighted with the most sincere smile I could muster, and I thought it would be more than sufficient, but judging by the lack of acknowledgement I received, I’d failed once again.

 

He still refused to look at me. 

 

“Double scotch, no ice.”

 

The familiarity of his voice, echoing the fading memory of what it sounded like exactly one week ago, was enough to blow me backwards and lose my voice, but it persisted as the curiosity outweighed the minor terror, and I nodded my head. 

 

“Of course. Give me just a minute.”

 

I prepared the drink all while feeling mercilessly watched, though there were no green and brown-flecked eyes anywhere on me, and I struggled to understand how he was able to carry such an air of intimidation. If I ever wanted to win, if I ever wanted to redeem my status of “excellent people-watcher,” then I would have to get over the trembling of my fingers and his many, many walls of defense. There had to be a way to get inside, a backdoor. There always was...it was simply a matter of finding it. 

 

In only a few short moments, as promised, I’d presented the drink to Dean and he fell into routine silence once more, leaving me to fend for myself and develop a strategy, one of stealth and cleverness, and one that would require me to make no social errors and speak with no awkward monotone voice. It was sure to be a difficult task, though I needed to be prepared. It needed to be carried out. 

 

So as Dean finished throwing back the second swig of his drink, closing his eyes lightly shut at he did so, my feet carried me forward, my hands propped themselves up on the bar, and a voice came out of my own mouth. It took me a great deal of time to realize that it was my own, instantly feeling shocked at my own courage. 

 

“It’s...getting rather cold out there, isn’t it?”

 

Of course it was. He was wearing a heavy leather jacket and a flannel shirt, and I’d come into work wearing my trench coat. Inside me, my mind winced and felt the red hot burn of embarrassment. It was an inexcusably stupid question, one that would most definitely cost me the night, if not my victory over Dean Winchester. I would be met with silence, cold and impenetrable silence, the lack of noise, the absence of sound, painful quiet-

 

“Doesn’t bother me much.”

 

All traces of familiarity were gone in an instant, blown out like a candle, along with my doubt and whatever kind of gameplan I had. I almost couldn’t bring myself to look at Dean as he spoke, but there was no way I’d be physically able to look away. He’d caught me with his words and kept me with his green and brown hues and his, still present, brokenness. It wasn’t as strong then, seeing as though the night had begun, but I could still hear it rumble, its tremble. Though maybe that was just my shaking hands distracting me. 

 

“Well, that’s good then!” I answered. There was no blatantly toneless voice there. I was enthusiastic and engaging. “It never gets very nice around here anyways. A shame, really…”

 

He was just staring at me with a look that I couldn’t comprehend. It certainly wasn’t an entirely positive one. It didn’t even possess much interest, really. It was just an ordinary stare that happened to look absolutely extraordinary and mindlessly intriguing, to the point where I was afraid to blink lest I miss a second of its presence.

 

Charlie’s words echoed in some unidentifiable corner of my mind, but their ring died down upon hearing Dean’s reply. 

 

“I don’t mind it much.”

 

I couldn’t gage the level of boredom in his voice, because he seemed like the kind of person who, if made uninterested, would simply cease speaking. I counted a total of three sentences that he’d omitted from his mouth in one singular evening, and if that didn’t scream only a tolerable level of boredom, than I’m not entirely sure what does. But, since his latest reply was not one that I could do much with, I simply smiled and attempted to busy myself with other tasks while the amber liquid made its own slow way down Dean’s throat.

 

I would be lying if I said that the rest of the night was any more eventful, at least until the end. I was served with a few pressingly amused smirks from Charlie from behind the kitchen’s doors that I did my best to ignore, of course. I learned all about a man who’d caught himself in a huge lie about his online alias: a woman of merely twenty one. (Supposedly the profile, made on some website I did not partake in nor have an account on, was only for a temporary joke but multiple people had caught wind of its existence. He assured me he was no creep, just a sadly misunderstood jokester. I didn’t know what to believe.) In between the ups and downs of this middle-aged, round around the middle man of around of, I estimated, fifty-three’s story, I snuck glances at Dean sitting just five bar-stools away with his elbows heavy on the wooden surface and eyes trained on what looked like a divot in it’s face from where someone must’ve dropped a beer keg. There was no thought in his eyes, just alcohol in his throat and minimal intent in his brain. 

 

Somewhere throughout the night, the online-aliased man mentioned something about his cousin finding the profile and showing awkwardly flirtatious interest, a detail that I figured was a highlight of the saga I’d been listening to for a good twelve minutes, but I had to cut him off, if only briefly. The last of Dean Winchester’s double scotch, with no ice, had passed his lips, and, if my time with him proved to be historically correct, he was definitely not there for just one drink. 

 

I shot up from my slouched position, my own elbows leaned up against the bar in a fashion similar to Dean’s though I doubted I carried the same charisma, and waddled over to his own and otherwise vacant area to supply him with more of his drink that he seemed to so desperately need. 

 

“Would you like another?”

 

Dean’s fingers drummed along the edge of his now vacant glass, as if considering a very basic question like he was making a bet, before pushing the glass forward and nearly into my hands. Slowly his head followed, and I couldn’t bring myself to fulfill his request until I was formally and truly meant with another head-on, green gaze.

 

“Hook me up.”

 

Swallowing the lump of something embarrassing that had begun blocking my airways, I nodded my head and traveled to the open bottle I’d used just a few minutes before. My mind was racing at I poured, the basic action taking far longer than around seven seconds within my head, but just that to the rest of the outside world. And that outside world was full of world-wide-web sex offenders in denial, the sharp tang of scotch in scuffy glasses, and the scent of leather, spices, and car grease.

 

Car grease. That was the sting in my nose. 

 

The revelation was stored away in my head like a piece of my very own hard drive, a section of my brain I’d somehow been functioning without, and I relished in the way it locked in place within the puzzle of Dean Winchester. He worked on cars...I knew that much. It could be his job, a mechanic of some sorts, but usually people were known to come to pubs directly after work and many still wore their uniforms. I’d come in contact with many mechanics over the years, one of which accidentally got his arm stuck in a muffler, and they’d always worn the mildly uncomfortable looking full-body suits that always seemed to come in baby blue. Dean had not worn anything of the sort in the two times that I’d seen him, but still smelled strongly of that black oil and gasoline. I checked car mechanic off my list and moved on.

 

He was obviously stressed, or he wouldn’t be hunched over with a crease in his brow staring at a dent in the bar’s surface, seemingly unable to give off any true emotions or let out even the smallest puff of steam. So I imagined cars and repairing them came as a hobby, a reliever of that impending stress, and he probably owned one that he was awfully proud of. (I’d once met a man who drove a classic Volkswagen Beetle that his father had bestowed upon him after passing of cancer, and he then proceeded to down an infamous number of shots and crash the car into the telephone pole just outside the pub. He was uninjured and I got to make my first 911 call on the job.)

 

Anyways, the car-lover persona did suit the look he had made for himself, all the way to the part of his hair down to the scent of his very much broken-in leather overcoat. Soon after handing the newly replenished drink over to Dean, I settled on my theory and uttered a satisfied sigh, one that I hoped was not as loud as I had made it seem. The new drink earned no response from Dean, and he even waited until I had walked a ways away before reaching forward to grab it and begin his self-destructive process all over again, but still I watched him.

 

I watched him as I conversed with a woman and her newlywed husband, both of which were seated three stools down from the mass of silence that Dean had no become, both clad in their wedding attire: a white, cascading gown and a crisp black suit. In a few minutes I’d gathered that they’d run away during their own wedding, feeling overwhelmed and pressured by the amount of guests and their families, and had tied the knot on their own in the park just down the street. I was a terrible person for not congratulating them to the degree that I should’ve, utterly terrible and inconsiderate and I could feel the guilt swelling up in the back of my throat, but it was no match for the curiosity. 

 

In minutes I’d learned a couple’s entire situation, their demeanor, (the wife being a workaholic, probably the boss of many, judging by the way in which she ordered her drinks and the wrinkles on her face. Certain wrinkles on the face were caused by certain things, of course. The husband was a follower, the complement of her and not the other way around. But anyone could figure that out if they had even just a brief amount of knowledge of family dynamics.) and could even tell you the ways that they both held their drinks and what the man’s breath smelled like, yet all I knew about Dean was that he was into cars. It was mindlessly frustrating to say the least, and none of that frustration subsided until the very end of the night. 

 

After a few torturous hours of guesswork, half-hearted conversations with people of all shapes, sizes, and stories, and several glasses of scotch without any ice, I glanced at the clock hanging just above the bar’s back wall to see that it was just about closing time. After bidding Charlie farewell, telling her I would do the honors of closing up again, I made my tentative way back over the Dean to bring him the news. We needed to close up shop and, yet again, he was the last person in the now dimly lit and nearly silent pub. The only noises to be heard were the faint sipping of Dean’s lips along the the rim of his glass and the minute clinking of the dishes I was putting away against each other. The sounds were so solitary and singular that they were enough to discomfort my ears. 

 

I placed my hands on the edge of the bar closest to me, directly across from Dean Winchester, and watched as he downed the last of his beverage in one foul swoop, the orange and brown liquid traveling down his gullet slowly and steadily. I liked to pretend that he didn’t see, or at least feel, me staring, but that was only wishful thinking. 

 

And Dean knew this.

 

And Dean voiced this.

 

“Look man, I don’t wanna be creepy ‘er anythin’...” He began, and before I knew it his eyes were staring at mine, and before I knew it I was frozen in place like two hands were grasping my ankles for dear life and anchoring me to the floor below. The green of his irises was even brighter now, brought to life by the expansion of his pupils and the alcohol running marathons through his veins. 

 

“...but I can see ya watching me, ya know...all night you were-were staring at me ‘n stuff. Kinda weird.”

 

Even slurred and hardly distinguishable, his words sent rolls of fear up and down my spine and cemented my feet further into the hardwood underneath my shoes. Talking or explaining myself seemed out of the question at that point, and I realized this upon noting the dryness of my tongue and palette, so I left it up to Dean to continue the exchange. He’d started it, of course, and before long he delivered once more. 

 

“Hah, I don’t mean to be a buzzkill or nothin’, just...ah...just makin’ sure you’re not into me or anything like that, hm?”

 

He was crazy, drunk, his statements driven by his craziness and polluted by his drunkenness. My head turned to one side in confusion, my eyes squinting as if trying to understand what he could’ve possibly meant by such a remark, and where it had even come from in the first place. My searches proved rather fruitless, however, since the alcohol proved to be a sufficient enough shield. Everything I could’ve gathered from his sentence could be blamed on the mundane poison working through his system, so no matter what I bothered to observe or analyze, he was still drunk. People said stupid things when they were drunk. That was the same for every night of the week, and Thursdays were no exception.

 

He was only drunk. There was literally absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about that. I could handle it. I could speak. I needed to speak. 

 

“Of-of course not. I was just...just…”

 

Dean’s lips curved upward into the most devilish of lazy and gleefully incoherent smiles, showing off a row of flawless teeth and cheeks that were quickly turning beet red. Not with embarrassment, of course, for I doubted shame was a familiar sensation to Dean Winchester, but with the effects of his drinks and the obvious distress his prying was causing me.

 

“Just what?” He teased.

 

“Just making sure you were alright. You seem distressed.”

 

I wasn’t lying, and that gave me some satisfaction. Dean seemed to accept my response, raising his eyebrows high into his forehead and nodding slightly in reply. 

 

“Heh...I appreciate your concern then.”

 

Dean swallowed and, suddenly, pushed his now empty glass forward, nearly sending it off the edge of the bar closest to me and I scrambled to catch it before it plummeted downward. After placing the glass in a safer position to be washed the next morning, I saw my companion begin digging through the inside pockets of his hefty jacket, his hands shuffling back and forth clumsily until they landed upon his wallet. 

 

“I’m guessin’ you came out to tell me I need to get the hell out?”

 

I didn’t want to succumb to his level of communication, I didn’t want to respond to his teasing remarks and annoyingly casual way of speaking, and I certainly didn’t want to do so and let myself slip and say something I would regret. I was still in the middle of the game, and this was certainly a high point. 

 

“We are closing,” I admitted, motioning towards the wall clock above both of our heads with a wave of my head. Dean’s eyes followed lazily. 

“But I-I wouldn’t put it that way,” I continued. I wasn’t trying to be rude, as he seemingly thought I was. Or, perhaps I just assumed he thought I was being impolite. His statements kept contradicting each other, but I was too concentrated on the circles under his eyes. What was their cause? Surely it wasn’t just ordinary exhaustion. That’s what Friday night’s tired eyes were for. 

 

“Only jokin’.”

 

Dean tossed me two twenties, a large amount of money that far surpassed the total that he owed, and my memory drove backwards to view the week before where he’d done the same. I imagined it what the amount of alcohol he consumed that caused the varying amount of dollar bills. If my theory was correct, he was much more hammered then than he had been before. It was also explain the halfway conversation. 

 

“T-this is a lot more than you owe...your total’s only nineteen dollars and sixteen cents-”

 

“Keep the change.”

 

The familiarity was a bullet into my defenses and I fell into a brief stuttering silence, blowing my walls and shattering my facades, and I could do nothing as Dean sauntered weakly away. His footsteps were a new and unintentional kind of heavy, his shoulders sank with a weight that wasn’t merely his jacket. He shouldn’t be allowed to drive; he would put himself and the others around him in danger, and I wasn’t satisfied with the painfully minimal amount of information I’d gathered about him that night.

 

“Wait, I really should call a cab, you’re in no condition to drive.”

 

And just as he had a week ago, Dean Winchester turned his head a full one-hundred and eighty degrees, leaning against the wooden doorframe with the chipping and peeling paint, and gave me one long look of green and amber and a brokenness that just wasn’t clear. It was hazy and undefined and very, very wholesomely cohesive. It consumed him until, it seemed, that there wasn’t any salvageable pieces to understand.

 

Was that it?

 

“I’ll be fine, Cas.”

 

Dean Winchester’s footsteps left the door and with it took the last sound in the vacant pub, the last sound other than my heartbeat pounding loud and fast in my chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would first like to say thank you to those who read the previous installment, commented, and left kudos-the smile on my face as a result was an embarrassing one but sincere and happy nonetheless. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and that it was a little more involved than the last. Updates, if I can truly pace myself and not fall behind nor get too excited, will come every Sunday. Wow...I feel so official saying that.  
> I do feel like Cas is the type of person to get hopelessly absorbed in other people, and not in the creepy way, but in the "I need to learn how to fit in better and improve my social skills, so I'm going to watch people until I can act like them exactly." Yes? No? Oh well.


	3. Speaking, and It's After-Effects

I’d met several mechanics and car junkies over the years. Their outward appearance was always rather predictable: unkempt hair, neckbeards of some sort, tired eyes, and very able hands. Their movements were often heavy, but they approached most everything as if it were a problem that could be fixed with a little bit of elbow grease and sweat. This included conversations with me, because whenever they were asked a trying question they dissected it, examined it, and tried to find the best route of repair. Most often they were just trying to repair their egos.

 

My thoughts were distracting me. I stopped myself from walking out into a busy street, full of cars buzzing both ways, when I heard two drivers engage in a particularly angry exchange from the stop light about how driver A had cut driver B off, and apparently driver B “couldn’t give two shits,” which didn’t go over well with his companion. I had to side with driver A, of course, because it was common courtesy to apologize for one’s reckless driving. So I stood at the edge of the sidewalk, toes peeking over the curb as I rocked back and forth in wait for the volley of vehicles to cease, and pulled my trench coat further across my shoulders and into my chest. It was just occurring to me then that the last of fall was fading away, along with its red and orange and yellow coloring, though I suppose the stop lights and electric colored cars would suffice as fall foliage. Living in the city prohibited much of nature’s natural progression of the seasons.

 

Anyways, there had been far more distractions than just my almost-dangerous street crossings. The past three days had been full of fruitless analyzation and vivid recollections of the last Thursday night. I still could recite the “online fraud man’s” story, and I could picture right in front of me the way in which the newlyweds snuck cheeky glances at one another, thrilled at the scandalous escape they’d made from their own marriage ceremony, but neither of those were as striking and clear as the cohesively broken mystery man’s voice and eyes. 

 

Parts of me had been hoping he’d show up before the following Thursday, which was still a torturous five nights away, but if he did, that would break what little sense I’d found in him: his pattern. Other than my flimsy theory of him enjoying cars, his Thursday night presence was the only thing I had to hold onto, and it wasn’t enough. 

 

Dean Winchester didn’t even fit the image of the mechanic or car junkie that I’d been busy running through my head. He didn’t approach things like a puzzle; he didn’t seem to approach things at all. His eyes were tired, but not with workload. They were exhausted by his homelife, whatever mental state he was in, and they were drained further by what I was beginning to assume was a small drinking problem. (He wasn’t trying to fix that issue, just as an example.) His hair certainly was not unkempt, it fell neatly to the left. He had no trace of a beard anywhere on his upper lip, chin, or neck. 

 

He didn’t fit the way he should, and it had been driving me insane for eleven days now. 

 

It was Sunday now, four-twenty-seven PM, and the street had finally cleared itself of bustling vehicles and drivers shouting profanities from the luxury of their interior, leather-bound seats. I walked to the opposite side, being sure to walk within the white walls of the crosswalk, and against the cold breeze of foreboding whiteness and ice. The pub was located at the corner of Ash street, the street to which I was walking towards, and I could see through the frosty windows that the lights were already gleaming through the front room and another co-worker of mine was scrubbing furiously at each table in the hasty and desperate manner that he seemed to do everything in.

Maybe his generally overwhelming and extreme nature would serve as a good enough distraction from the insanity running marathons back and forth inside of my head. If it didn’t cease fire soon, I really could stroll straight into traffic.

 

The door’s bell rang obnoxiously loud when I entered and the scrubbing co-worker ceased his intense cleaning to look up at who’d arrived, eyes alive with minor a startling fading from his large pupils. I would’ve felt a twinge of guilt for frightening him, but it was nearly a daily occurrence and my sympathies simply for his personality had long since run out. 

 

“Oh, hey Castiel, didn’t see you there…” He grumbled, obviously annoyed at what he assumed was a rude entrance on my part. 

 

“Hello, Kevin. I’m not late, am I?” I asked, checking my watch. 

 

“No, you’re right on time. Just like every other day. Never late. Ever.”

 

I never was able to wrap my head around Kevin’s condescending tone that often made itself apparent when I asked that question, sometimes chalking it up to a lack-of-perfection complex, but I didn’t busy myself with it then. Instead I traveled to the kitchen, punched in at exactly four-thirty, and began arranging the shot glasses in the order I liked them in most. I’d almost gotten myself entirely invested in the simple task, separated from whatever was going on around me, when Kevin chimed in again. He had a stunning knack for doing so.

 

“Oh, Charlie told me to tell you she’s gonna be late today. She’s visiting family downtown I guess, but she’ll close up today. Said you’ve been doing it too much lately.”

 

I gave Kevin a nod of acknowledgement, a little crestfallen that I wouldn’t be seeing my friend for a few more hours when she typically arrived at two minutes past six, no more no less, but I was also worried about sticking it out with Kevin Tran. Though I did enjoy his company, since being in the pub without anyone to talk to besides those in the kitchen wasn’t something I liked, his constant worried mumblings, remarks, and jumpiness made it hard to bond with him. I hoped it was his nervous nature and not my lack of people skills that made it challenging.

 

“I swear,” Kevin called now from the opposite side of the main room, kneeling underneath one of the larger booths as he reached for the spray bottle he’d placed atop the table. I watched with the smallest inkling of a grin across my face as his hand fumbled for the object and listened to his complaint,

 

“It’s like these people just throw their beers onto the floor and stick their gum under the tables in the same exact spot, just to screw with me. Did anyone even wash these booths yesterday?”

 

Kevin’s head extended outward, just so I could see his long black bangs shield the tops of his eyebrows, which I was sure were furrowed in disgust and his permanent annoyance.

 

“Charlie told me she’d clean the tables that were especially soiled before she left last night…” I replied, slightly embarrassed as I quickly realized that it was another task that I should’ve performed on my own.

 

Kevin laughed dryly, a laugh that I’d come to know was one of sarcasm and didn’t actually mean humor had entered the conversation.

 

“Pfft...cleaning to Charlie is putting water on a paper towel and wiping the top of a table once or twice. Not exactly thorough.”

 

All I could do was send him an awkward look of apology, for we both knew neither of us would survive without the impeccable guidance of Charlie Bradbury, no matter how subpar her table-cleaning skills were. I watched as my other, less laidback yet apparently much more hygienic companion rolled his dark eyes and went back to worth, muttering,

 

“Why do I even bother?”

 

The rest of the evening played out in a similar manner. I received a text from Charlie, asking if Kevin had let me know about her absence and that he’d been the one to inform me because I only ever checked my phone around seven o’ clock. I replied with a “yes i am aware,” but felt a little agitated about my newly found predictability. The cause of such agitation, however, quickly switched sources when I slid my finger across the “read” button to see what her reply would be.

 

“cool, see u then. oh-remember to keep an eye 4 that mystery dude. who knows? maybe he comes more often than just thursdays.”

 

It took me a moment to remember that she couldn’t see my angered expression, my usual response to her endless remarks and one-liners, and forced myself to hash out a satisfactory text of annoyance to her. 

 

“you’re impossible.”

 

“and ur obsessive! we all have our flaws. it’s what makes us human dude.”

 

Charlie Bradbury really was impossible, but not necessarily in the way that I was implying. She was impossibly clever, thoughtful, and very intuitive. Her way of observation varied greatly from mine, though I wished mine could span across text messages in the same way her’s could. She also proved to be much better at digital communication than I, because already I had run out of sufficient replies.

 

“don’t you have family to visit?”

 

It took her seconds to answer.

 

“ya, but they’re not as fun to screw with as u.”

 

“should i take offense to that?”

 

There was no “misleading humor” there, unlike Kevin’s laugh from earlier that day. 

 

“no, i’m just messing with u. i’ll leave u to ur bartending duties. adios castiel :)”

 

I liked the smiling faces that Charlie typed out, usually to signal departure, and couldn’t get over the novelty of that colon and singular parenthesis. Kevin had once tried to explain to me that it was something usually done out of irony, or that sarcasm he was so fluent in, but when Charlie used it, it seemed genuine, so Kevin’s lesson went unused. I turned off my phone and slid it into the back pocket of my pants, feeling its weight pull down on my waistline.

 

The Sunday night crowd was one that I enjoyed, to say the least. While they were far more predictable than the Thursday nighters, it was an odd collage of personalities and characters that, unless one worked in a position similar to mine, many would not expect to see at such a place like a bar. Congregations of holy figures of all sorts flooded the doors, escaping after the last of the “Lord’s day” gatherings had finished. They were never rowdy, never rude, never too loud but never too awkwardly quiet and respectful. 

 

“Never thought priests would come and hang at local pubs…” Kevin murmured to me as he entered behind the bar with a damp, darkened towel in his hand and a line of sweat across his brow. 

 

“I doubt their all priests, probably deacons actually, and-”

 

“Just...making a generalization, Castiel.”

 

I made a note to touch up on my satire detection. It seemed to have been getting rusty as of late.

 

Once the clock struck ten-thirty, I’d conversed with two nuns who’d ordered coffee, nothing more, and spoke to me about the fate of the world, how God was about to strike down and “zap away the human race, just like that!” “Just like that!”, and their humorous take on an otherwise morbid and grave topic almost made my smile real, almost took away the new undertone of stress that’d followed me around the rest of the night. 

 

A priest had given me his take on the Catholic marriage process and how he found it painful and much too extensive, and how he really didn’t get the anti-same-sex priests he came in contact with daily. His response to the issue made me smile wide, for real this time and without the inklings of existential terror.

 

“If anything, I think God would be more upset with the amount of marriages that end in bitter, financially driven divorce. I don’t think the gender of the participants concerns him, nor has it ever.”

 

I agreed with him very strongly and thus earned a pleasing tip that I slid in the same pocket of my pants that held my cellphone, and the increased weight caused my pants to pull down even further along my waist. A little flustered, I began adjusting my belt, pulling the clip loose for just a moment as I yanked the other side tight. It took too many moments, however, to fit the belt into its new loop and I stood fiddling for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I hoped Kevin couldn’t see me, and I hoped that whoever had just entered the pub wasn’t too judgmental of my compromising state. The doorbell gave out a harsh ding, one that somehow stood out from all the clergymen and women around me.

 

I realized, in the seconds that followed, that that specific ding carried with it a lot of significance.

 

“Well doesn’t he look a bit unhappy…” one of the apocalypse nuns murmured, nudging her partner and pointing to whoever’d just entered. While I looked at the two women clad in black and white, I could feel the newcomers footsteps rattle the floorboards and wondered what priest could possibly have had such a bad day doing the Lord’s work. 

 

But then a strange scent made its way towards me, teasing my memory and wrapping its fumes around my mind until the picture to go with it faded from the smoke into clarity. Gasoline and car grease. 

 

But it was only Sunday.

 

It was the Lord’s Day.

 

But Dean Winchester didn’t seem to care.

 

Instead of my hurried pace improving the amount of time it took me to properly adjust my belt, my fingers only continued to fumble along its surface, and it wasn’t finally secure until the leathery source of my mental torment had sat down on a barstool, this one closer to his fellow bar dwellers than before, let out several puffs of anger, and taken his time to run his eyes up and down my figure, examining just what the hell I was doing. 

 

But upon succeeding in my mundane yet oddly challenging task, my head shot upwards and eyes instantly met his in an attempt to look aware and polite. It took a great deal of self control to not draw back in shock and confusion, however, and the eyes staring back at me, the ones attached to Dean Winchester’s skull, were cold. I was shivering long before I’d made my tentative way over to him and placed my hands on the bar’s edge just in front of him, noting that the mannerism was borderline habitual.

 

Another thing that seemed to be becoming habitual, regardless of whether it was intentional or not, was my lack of a voice when forced into conversation with the illusive man leaning with shoulders hunched and breathing heavy just a foot of bar in front of me. 

 

“H-hello…” I stuttered, wondering if I should touch on his familiarity to me. Would that ease the the tension he’d brought? With one more look at his clenched jaw, I decided against it.

 

“What’ll you have?”

 

I watched his head crane upwards in a way that was almost mechanical, like gears were arching his neck and deepening the arch in his brow and clenching his sleek jawline. Even his lips, which were contorting themselves into a grin that I knew for a fact was without any trace of sincerity and burned like hot metal on skin, moved like they were powered by some internal motor. I began to wonder if the motor’s fuel was the anger radiating from him.

 

Dean gave me that false smile, eyes squinted and head cocked slightly to the side, before replying, “Double scotch. No ice.”

 

“I should’ve touched on the familiarity” I thought as I scrambled to find the supplies for his drink, and even its simplicity was not enough to dull my nerves and stop my eyes from flying back and forth. The bottle shook within the grasp of my right hand and I struggled to hold the glass still with my less dominant hand, probably earning yet another judgmental stare and another clenching of jaw. Eventually though the liquid had been poured, the drink had been served, and I was busy contemplating my next move and analyzing the very way in which Dean breathed. 

 

He was obviously furious. His hands were shaking around his glass, fingers trembling and seemingly unable to hold still, more than mine had been during that drink’s preparation. I saw him grind his teeth together so fiercely it nearly made me flinch. Each sip was followed by a loud exhale of hot air, like steam creating as an after product of that motor I concluded was running within him. And when I stood close enough, I could feel and hear his left foot tap against the floor, but it wasn’t to the subtle tune of the song playing in the background of all the background’s noise. It was his own little beat, his own tune, which happened to be one that I struggled to keep up with.

 

Yet even through my fascination, and minor worry, I observed. He was obviously an angry person, and the emotion seemed relatively common for him to experience. He obviously thought he knew how to deal with it: coming to a bar and drinking it away until the cause of the meanness and the frustration was as blurred as his vision. He appeared to me like a man of destructive repetition, my reasoning played out in front of me. 

 

Dean Winchester is a man who had a passion for cars and worked on them often. He is a destructive person who drinks too much and liked to use alcohol as a remedy for his terrible anger. He doesn’t know how to deal with his emotions.

 

I scrawled those words down in my mind and stored them away to be reviewed at a later time, because I’d decided to invade my notes’ subject’s walls and sneak a peek at just what was the matter.

 

The previous time Dean Winchester had graced the pub with his presence, it took him about sixteen minutes to finish one drink. On this occasion, it had been approximately six minutes and he’d drained his glass about two thirds of the way, a rate that I couldn’t imagine felt physically pleasing in any way, shape, or form. I myself wasn’t a fan of scotch: it burned too intensely when it touched the inside of my throat. I must’ve felt like his own personal forest fire at the speed Dean was inhaling his beverage, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the point.

 

I have to physically s-p-e-a-k, if I want to really know what his point is, I reminded myself.

 

“Is everything alright?”

 

My voice sounded louder than I’d expected it to, and I suddenly felt rude and intrusive for even making a noise. Dean jumped at the sound, his shoulders tensing with the fright and his fingers wrapping even tighter around his glass lifeline, a lifeline that was ironically extremely breakable.

 

It appeared as though Dean spent a long time contemplating my statement, and perhaps he was wondering whether I was worth his breath or not. Of course, I was appalled when he simply acknowledged my existence and I expected next to nothing in return, but the curiosity had worn down my logic and sanity until nothing but dust remained, and I had to know. I couldn’t hold back the obnoxiously loud sound of my voice that was startling the singular person it was directed towards.

 

“Just peachy. Just damn peachy.”

 

He chewed on his lip upon completing his sentence and let out a sigh through only flared nostrils. It was like watching a machine struggle to power down, struggle to let off steam, and fall into necessary dormancy. I had a strange need to help him, a strange desire to remove at least some of whatever was tormenting him from the equation, because just observing him was exhausting, draining even. 

 

“Well, nothing a few drinks can’t help, I suppose!”

 

Positivity and lightheartedness was not the correct route to take, I believe. Dean’s eyebrows raised far into his head and he smiled that same, misleading smirk before shaking his head no, the gesture full of dread and submission. It was broken.

 

“I’ve sure heard that before.”

 

Dean picked up his glass and turned it in his hands a few times, swishing the mahogany liquid in his cup around, and he examined it like a scientist gazing through the lens on a microscope. I didn’t think there was much to see within its small waves and spicy aftertaste, but Dean seemed to think differently. It was pumping through his very veins, of course.

 

“Would you like another?” I asked, the moment he’d finished dissecting the scotch, downed its remains in one go, and slammed the cup down on the bar with a resounding thud. He nodded in response to my offer, flicking the glass forward and towards my hands. It landed barely a millimeter away from the edge of my finger and I could feel the places where his own hands had grasped it, like hotspots. 

 

“This one’s on the house,” I added passively. If humor didn’t work, maybe common decency would spark an interest?

 

From the outskirts of my peripheral vision, I saw Dean’s own eyes perk up and widen at the thought of free drinks, and his expression shifted, now appearing to be confused. The sound of the scotch bottle emptying nearly drowned out his response, a word that I didn’t really expect to hear pass his round, pink lips,

 

“Oh...thanks.”

 

In no time at all the new beverage had been delivered to its intended recipient, who quickly resumed his hasty pace and averted his eyes from mine after what I assumed to be an out of character display of gratitude, no matter how minute it had been. In the moments I had of silence, I examined the scene outside of Dean and I: most of the clergymen and women had departed, left the places in which they had sat and conversed spick and span, like the pub had been vacant the entire evening, and the only few remaining persons were a couple showing their Sunday night affection in the corner, probably using up the last of their weekend energy before the daily work grind came back around. Thankfully they weren’t too noisy.

 

A sound did cut through the almost-silence, however, and it was that damned door bell once more. Yet instead of immediately flinging my head and vision upwards to see who’d entered, I just averted my eyes slightly to get at least a sideways glance at who’d waltzed in at twenty one minutes past eleven, and was met with a pleasing sight, full of red hair, giggles, and skipping steps. 

 

Charlie had arrived, cheeks red with an excess of drink, and her arm was flung loosely around Kevin’s shoulders as she made her arrival known. Kevin smiled, a small version of the expression, before continuing his furious sweeping and taking a few steps backwards. Charlie’s bright eyes then proceeded to scan the pub until their gaze touched down on me and the man whom I was in dangerous proximity to, and I saw the light of recognition dawn in her pupils. 

 

“Is that the mystery dude?” She mouthed, but it felt as though she’d screamed the statement through a megaphone. 

 

All she got in response was the sinking of my shoulders and a harsh glance, hopefully letting her know that as happy as I was to see her, I was simply not in the mood for her shenanigans, and that I had work to do. I had a conversation to start and a shell to crack. Unfortunately, while Charlie did understand the intent behind my stare, she also took it as a yes, confirming her theory, and a look of excitement and thrill lit up her face. I hoped she’d let me handle this one on my own, though.

 

I waited until Charlie had disappeared behind the kitchen doors, sending me a few winks as she did so that I did my best to deflect and ignore, before turning cautiously back to the subject of Charlie and I’s heated exchange. He hadn’t moved much, aside from his hand and his lips as they curled forcefully around his glass’s rim, and eventually I got tired of the silence and decided to try my luck once more. He didn’t seem entirely opposed to talking, and four days ago I’d gotten more sentences out of him than I’d ever hoped, so my odds weren’t awful.

 

I swallowed deeply, my fingers gripping the bar’s edge until my knuckles turned white, a pitiful attempt at stabilizing myself, and I hoped Charlie wasn’t lying in wait. 

 

“It looks like something has upset you,” I announced. It was said more matter-of-factly than intended, but it got the point across. Everything about Dean’s outward appearance screamed inner turmoil; I was merely pointing out and observing what was obvious. 

 

“It’s nothing new,” He grumbled, pausing from his drink, taking his free hand and wiping the side of his face. With the streak came off a wall of his defenses; I watched as his eyes grew sadder.

 

“Is...is this a common occurrence?” I inquired. I was on thin ice, but I spied an opening in the distance and I had to act upon it. 

 

Before answering, Dean chewed on his lip again like he was searching for the right way to phrase the reply that had popped into his head, or perhaps looking for one that he deemed suitable. I knew the majority of him didn’t want to tell me anything, that part of him wanted me to leave him in peace, but that was impossible, given how intrigued I was. Besides, if he didn’t let me converse with him, I wouldn’t be doing my job right. Bartending was an occupation that thrived on social interaction and communication, of course.

 

“There’s always somethin’ to be pissed about.”

 

Dean Winchester is not an optimist by any means.

 

The thought planted itself in my head. 

 

“If there’s always something, that something must be especially severe today. You’re...very aggravated.”

 

Dean opened his mouth to reply without any hesitation, and for a brief piece of time my heart leapt in success and victory, but then he drew back, and so did my spirits. He was still holding onto the remains of his sobriety and hadn’t let himself go, at least not all the way, and I’d tried my luck too early. I was about to pay the price as well.

 

“Listen man, I can tell you’re just tryna do your job here…” He began, rubbing a strong hand along the back of his neck and avoiding eye contact at all costs. There wasn’t much else to look at but his eyes trained themselves on whatever was not my face, whatever was not the face of the annoying pestering he was being forced to endure. 

 

“But I don’t need some...stranger listenin’ in on my life story and my issues, ‘kay? I appreciate your concern and all but…”

 

There were so many possible buts. There were so many scenarios that could play out, so many things that could end his sentence, so many possible sources of his intensified anger, and so little time for me to choose an option and form a strategy around it. All I could was stand, lean forward, and stare at his castaway eyes and make note of the freckles dotting the bridge of his nose and the pink skin just underneath his cheeks, wonder what the source was, and feel my curiosity boil over into something I could no longer contain. 

 

“It’s not what I need,” Dean finally concluded. And his response was not one of the dozens that I’d run through my head. All possible strategies were abandoned.

 

“What I need...is some booze, some time to destress, probably some pretty lady to help pass the time, and, well, more booze. And I’ll be fine. End of story.”

 

Contrary to my companions belief, that is not where this story ended. Not enough action or interaction had occurred, and I could see straight through the few flimsy remaining walls surrounding the structure of Dean Winchester. Booze, destressors, and women were what he’d used to treat whatever hidden emotions, vices, and undealt with past demons in the past, but they hadn’t worked. Their failure was evident in that same slump of his shoulders, the way his lips were trained to meet a bottle, the way he was skilled in the art of denial and lack of formal, polite eye contact, and every other defensive trait he’d exhibited in the three occasions I’d had the pleasure of interacting with him, no matter how minimal such interaction had been. 

 

To continue the story that Dean seemed sadly intent on ending early, there had to be some moment of “start.” Something had to set the rest of the saga in motion, something monumental. Someone had to make a discovery, uncover a mystery, have some life-changing revelation, or, in simpler, more doable terms…

 

speak.

 

“So, with that out of the way...mind hookin’ me up?”

Dean motioned towards his glass, and I happily obliged to fulfill his request, but I took the few moments of personal space as a period of thought. He wasn’t speaking, not really. He was avoiding, avoiding every possible window I was offering him. I needed to say something. I couldn’t give him much of an option. It was past eleven PM on a Sunday night, those of a holy occupation had long since vacated the premises, and I still had a game to win. 

 

With a flick of my wrist, I flung Dean’s drink to him from across the bar, its underside screeching against the wood and dragging the moisture it had accumulated out in a cold, wet stream, and it landed just outside his fingertips, like the vacant version of the glass had done to me earlier that night. There must’ve been something different about my demeanor in doing so, however, because we’d finally met eyes and he was sending me a trying, inquisitive, yet overwhelmingly sly look, as if he was daring me to say whatever it was that was ghosting my lips, trying to pry my mouth open. Eventually my self control had worn too thin and the sound of my own voice, a sharp contrast to Dean’s, was echoing throughout the pub before I could convince myself otherwise and draw away.

 

“As much as alcohol helps, Dean Winchester, I think what you need most is someone to listen to whatever has got you in this state. It can really help, trust me.”

 

I’ll never forget the look in Dean’s eyes after that statement had been thrown into the space between us, let loose to grow and expand and change its surroundings in any way it deemed necessary. Shock or surprise wouldn’t be the correct term, and try as I might to search my brain for the proper phrasing, I could lay in thought all day and still not find the best way to describe it. But, I like to think that my suggestion to him, my offering of an unbiased ear, meant something to him. 

 

Perhaps the suggestion, one that he’d probably never been offered before in his life, made just a small amount of sense to him. 

Regardless, in the hours that followed, Dean Winchester surely made much more sense to me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made an executive decision to post this a day early because I've had it completed for a long time now and I won't be home much tomorrow, so I hope that's alright with whoever's reading. I also want to give another thank you for the uplifting words and support so far. It may not seem like much to seem, but the amount of time I've spent giggling over your comments and kudos is almost foolish.


	4. Confessions of Brotherly Love, and a Friend's Spot On Predictions

“It’s just that...he doesn’t get it. He ruined our lives, really. We never lived in one place. We never stopped. We never took a breather.”

 

“I’m alright, it didn’t mess me up too bad, but I’m so worried about Sammy. He grew up like that, right from the start.”

 

“No matter what I did, it wasn’t good enough. I raised Sammy, and I wouldn’t take any of it back in a heartbeat, but, hell, a dad is what he needed.”

 

“Sometimes I feel like my old man, really. All this booze smells a lot like he did...heh…”

 

“But it’s my brother that I’m worried about. I just wish I coulda done more, made homelife a little less shitty. I owe him that much.”

 

“Sam’s off at fuckin’ Stanford now though. I haven’t talked to him in over two years, but it seems like life is pretty fine ‘n dandy for him. Good. I’m glad.”

 

“And just look at me now! I’m ranting off to nobody bartenders at deadbeat pubs, doin’ the same shit my dad did and complaining like I got any fuckin’ right to.”

 

“...no offense.”

 

The words haunted me. They echoed in my ears, like faraway calls for help, whenever I fell into moments of silence. They blew past me, reminding me of their incurable pain and sadness whenever I got a second of relief. They knocked on the walls of my head and demanded acknowledgement, demanded thought, demanded consideration, even when the source was nowhere to be found. 

 

Those words were all I heard as Sunday turned into dreaded Monday and I was stuck attempting to listen to the cubicle stories, of the hurtful gossip shared at the water cooler, and how “Leanne had no right to say that about me, especially not when I know her husband’s been sleeping with our bosses sister and-get this-she may be pregnant!”. 

 

Those words danced and sang like words to a catchy song when I was forced to deal with the suburban soccer moms on Tuesday who did nothing but shout and complain about their husbands inability to arouse them in any way, shape or form, and I was even lucky enough to see a divorce pact formulate and be set in stone. (It was in times like those that I did, in fact, question the fate of the human race.)

 

Those words screamed until my ears rang and my own throat was sore from just the thought of it in my head during the ever-present silence of Wednesdays, apart from the occasional homeless drunkard who begged at the window to be let inside for a free drink or two. In those moments, I let the words distract me from the guilt I felt in turning them away, but their incessant blast of broken homes and guilty memories soon became too much to bear. 

 

Charlie even asked me if I was alright, and I suspected she’d been tipped off by Kevin, who was often very perceptive of his co-workers’ well-being. I turned her concern away, however, in fear of my unnatural worrying about someone I, truly, had forced into sharing the drunken version of his life’s events. She would certainly turn it into some sort of lesson about the follies of life and the eternal sea of injured souls and irreparable pasts in the ironically melodramatic way she did most everything, but I wouldn’t be able to explain to her why this Dean Winchester fit into a category outside of that one. Not without making myself sound like a complete fool with an embarrassing and inexcusable obsession with winning my own game, that is.

 

That was the heart of the obsession, of course. Nothing more and nothing less.

I had thrown him quite the curveball by using his name as a tool to prompt him into sharing his story. Fortunately, by the time I got around to explain how I’d learned it in the first place, he was too far away from the knowledgeable light of sobriety to consider the general creepiness and oddity of it all, for I highly doubted memorizing the name on a driver’s license peeking out from someone’s wallet as their trying to pay is considered normal. To be quite frank, quite little of the situation I’d found myself in with Dean Winchester was considered normal by any means.

 

Eventually I’d gotten around to asking Dean how he’d come to know my name. I didn’t find it odd, mostly just a step toward mutual familiarity and, dare I say it, some warped kind of trust where only one half of the party was sober. Dean informed me that he’d heard “your redhead coworker over there,” obviously referring to Charlie, use it and “figured you wouldn’t really mind.” He was right. I couldn’t mind less, and I gawked at the three times within that Sunday evening where he even shortened my name, like he had that previous Thursday, into Cas. 

 

“It’s definitely easier to pronounce,” I remarked to myself as I turned the sign on the pub’s door from its harsh “closed” to the more warm, inviting word “welcome,” as if the action was ceremonial in some way. 

 

The drawbacks of Dean and I’s most intricate exchange yet were minimal, but still present, like a small insect that continued to buzz around your ear but never flew in close enough for you to swat it away permanently. Kevin had picked up on my new interest, being the observer he was, and had tried several times to inquire me further about the matter, but I never said very much for there wasn’t too much I could think of in reply. I explained to him my challenge of figuring out how Dean Winchester worked and why I was so adamant in doing so: he’d eluded me for three nights in a row now, and there was simply no way I could let that slide. But, judging by the way he exchanged a fleeting but very amused look with Charlie, he had taken it in the wrong way, the most incorrect way, and there was little that I could do to fight the pungent red from spreading across my otherwise pale cheeks. 

 

Charlie, on the other hand, was a different story, a much more invasive, inappropriate, and troublesome story. Once again, Dean Winchester had stayed at the bar’s edge until the very moment we were closing (and he still denied my call for a taxi, prompting an undertone of worry that still hadn’t been extinguished four days later.), and while I was feeling the late night effects, Charlie had enough energy to split between the two of us. She chose to spend it on ruthlessly interrogating me though, and it went something like this:

 

“Well isn’t he quite the catch?”

 

In my habitual way of reacting to anything remotely out of the norm, I nearly tossed the bundles of glasses I was carrying in between my fingers in shock at her ludicrous statement. What in the world was she talking about?

 

“He’s very troubled, really,” I replied, being perfectly honest and wishing she wouldn’t dwell further.

“All the more mysterious! He’s living up to his nickname now!” She exclaimed, but paused for a moment before dropping her voice and leaning in towards me, standing on the opposite end of the bar where our topic of conversation had laid his heavy arms just minutes earlier, while I busied myself with wiping the beer dispensers down with what I hoped was a clean cloth. Had it been my turn to do the laundry?

 

“I heard some of the stuff he was telling you...Cas.”

 

I flinched at the sound of her using my newly appointed nickname, but my tensing meant nothing to her and she continued her analysis of the situation she’d so clearly witnessed...secondhand. And with a kitchen door with but one small, circular window separating her from Dean and I as it played out.

 

“His homelife really must’ve been awful. His dad totally checked out, hm? You can’t do that to your kids, no matter what the situation is. I really hope his brother is alright, too...what was his name…?”

 

“Sam,” I stated plainly. “His brother’s name is Sam.”

 

“Sam and Dean Winchester...has a good ring to it,” she remarked, her voice faraway and distant as though she in the middle of a daydream. 

 

“He really seemed to trust you! Nice work. Have you got him all figured out yet?” Charlie continued after a moment’s silence when she realized that I wasn’t exactly keen on being sociable and keeping the conversation alive. Not only was I trying my best to avoid the questions and inquiries that were sure to be brought up, I felt as though I was betraying that trust Dean had handed to me after being so reluctant to do so earlier, no matter how flimsy or circumstantial that trust may be. 

 

“I know that’s a thing you do.”

 

But, the feeling of being rude and hurtful towards one of my closest friends trumped the sense of betrayal, if only for a short while, and I found myself shaking my head no in reply. 

 

“No, not really. All while he was telling me about his childhood and his family he made it very clear that he was okay, that he was only concerned with how their homelife had ‘screwed up’ Sam.”

 

Charlie raised her eyebrows and smirked, obviously about to ask a rhetorical question.

 

“You think he’s avoiding talking about himself.”

 

I nodded and stuffed the hopefully-clean-rag-now-soiled in the dirty laundry bin underneath bar and it landed with a resounding, damp and squishy thud.

 

“Something like that.”

 

“Well then you still have your work cut out for you, then! Don’t let this one get away, Cas!” My companion giggled at the annoyance her humorous determination inspired within me, evident in my sigh and the sink of both my shoulders, before making her own way over to my side of the bar. Her choice method of transportation was flinging herself over the wooden structure and landing, with surprising grace, on both her feet just in front of me. 

 

“C’mon, don’t let this be the one that got away.”

 

I rolled my eyes and took a half step backwards, adjusting my position so I didn’t have to be under the all-knowing Bradbury gaze that made cautious chills run up and down my arms. She was implying something that was escaping me, or, more rather, something that I was avoiding at all costs. I could see its sheen and shimmer in her brightly colored irises, and it was very unnerving.

 

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea here, Charlie…”

 

“No, I think I’m pretty right on this one,” She implored. “No judging here of course. Hell, I’m happy for you-”

 

“That’s not what this is about, trust me.”

 

This time, it was Charlie’s turn to roll her eyes in exasperation. I knew I was being thick and blunt, but it was my last line of defenses, and I really did not want to hear whatever was about to make its way from her lips and into my ears. I didn’t think the shade of red on my cheeks could get any more red, or my face would simply burst into flames and spontaneously combust.

 

“Geez, Castiel, get a grip! You’re obviously into the guy. I can see how you look at him! He’s totally gorgeous, with those damn green eyes and rugged jawline. I would be right there with ya, if I was into that sort of thing…”

 

She added her last remark with a low chuckle, one that would’ve caused a smile to paint itself across my own face on any typical day, but it was too busy catching color and heat then, and the current situation was not one to grin at.

 

It wasn’t that what she was saying didn’t make sense to me. It did. I totally understood what she meant in her blunt, expletive description of Dean Winchester’s eyes and the way they sunk into avoidance whenever he was confronted in a way he couldn’t combat, or the way they got darker and darker as the moon hung higher and higher in the sky. I knew what she meant by his jawline, and the way he clenched it tight every time a question he deemed unanswerable was directed at him, or how it tensed just before he was about to deliver a particularly rude response. 

 

I stumbled backwards one more half-step to avoid Charlie and I’s noses nearly colliding and managed to croak out the epicenter of my current confusion. 

 

“It’s definitely not like that, at all.”

 

Charlie wasn’t satisfied.

 

“Then please, feel free to enlighten me,” She taunted. I happily obliged. 

 

“Dean...seems lost. There’s a lot going on his life at the moment, with his brother leaving for Stanford and his father being in the situation he’s in. I don’t believe he has anyone to unload on, so I’ve tried to take on the role.”

 

I thought my reply was perfectly acceptable, perfectly understandable and okay. I was doing Dean Winchester a favor while attempting to win that game that I was still obsessing over, and I couldn’t see a single thing wrong with that, but Charlie’s look made me feel like I was the odd one out, like I was committing some irreparable social sin that was too scandalous to speak aloud. 

 

“You know, that’s usually the thing people do when they like someone,” was her response. While I had made the few steps backwards to regain even a fraction of my desired personal space back, she’d remained in place and the smile spreading wide and true across her cheeks made her even more difficult to face by the second. I hated feeling so looked down upon, but that was not the only disliked feeling within my mind at that moment. There were several, and Charlie’s words only made them more and more apparent. 

 

“You’re saying that it’s a crime for me to attempt to get to know Dean Winchester?” I snarled under my breath, growing impatient and deciding to no longer fight the defensive edge to my voice that I’d been trying to conceal. 

 

“Dude, of course not! I never said it was a crime, it’s just that you try to get to know all of the people you serve, especially on Thursdays.”

 

I swallowed hard, my eyes falling to some unidentifiable place on the floor as to avoid anymore staring. Was I really that transparent?

 

“And that’s cool. It’s what you do, and you’re pretty damn good at it!” She continued, making note of my change in attitude and making a change in her own tone of voice. It was gentler now and easier to listen to, its mocking sting gone. 

 

“I’m just saying that you’re showing a lot of interest in this Dean guy, which, again, is understandable, and that maybe it couldn’t hurt to keep at it? You know, get to know him from his family all the way down to whether his right or left handed, his favorite color...the good stuff.”

 

“He’s right handed. It’s the hand he holds his drink with and the one that holds his wallet in,” I interjected, but quickly realized that my small Winchester-tidbit had done little to help my case. Charlie’s smile just deepened. 

 

“Good to know, lovebird.”

 

She turned around on her heels suddenly, now standing next to me and facing in the same direction, and flung her thin arm around both of my shoulders, pulling me in close. Placing her head next to mine, she extended her hand outward and waved it across the pub like a tour guide showing off a particularly beautiful patch of scenery. I was struggling to find the beauty in a vacant pub though, besides the shine of the tables that Kevin had just cleaned. 

 

“There’s a whole helluva lot of people out there in the great wide world and we’re lucky enough to meet them all in here, when they’re at their lowest. If you’re even luckier, you get to meet someone here that is more special than the rest, that means something to you even where they’re in such a shitty state. You should keep an eye on that someone...maybe even slip ‘em your number on a napkin, if you know what I mean…”

 

I gave her another look of exasperation, sighing at Charlie’s never ending flow of sly remarks but surprisingly warm and kind advice, but didn’t mean it in the negative, denial-laced way in which I had before. It took a great deal of effort not to smile, and an even greater amount of effort not to consider her bogus suggestion. Upon receiving my gaze, my redhead companion broke out into a fit of giggles, releasing me from her grasp and holding her stomach as she did so, and when she turned to leave and enter the kitchen, she clapped me hard on the back. 

 

“You’re an angel, Castiel. Any guy or gal would be incredibly lucky to call you their own. And don’t forget that conversation we had about soulmates the other day. Very educational stuff.”

 

I had no more sarcastic grins, looks of exasperation, or frustrated sighs to give her at that point, and even if I had, she was out of the bar and into the kitchen at a speed I didn’t know she could reach. The need for escape was a very efficient motivator, I found out, more so than the need to combat, and I left her be to her own assumptions. I just hoped they didn’t get inside my own head too much and cloud my vision. I needed to be wholly focused on the task at hand and grasp the goal: learning all that there was to know about Dean Winchester. 

 

There was no space in my head to even consider any other attributes of Dean other than his troubles and the reasons behind his broken mind. I couldn’t enjoy the starkness of his cheekbones, the fire in his eyes, hot like the burn of whiskey that I struggled to down, his lean middle, or strong, fit legs because I was too busy imagining how heated the exchanges between him and his father were, imagining how it must’ve felt to be called useless by the one man who’s supposed to love you unconditionally, imagining what it’s really like to have beer bottles shatter at the walls around you, the walls that are supposed to make up your home.

 

I couldn’t marvel over the way Dean carried himself: with long strides but hunched shoulders, a sign that I took was of confliction, or the way his leather jacket fell expertly across his broad wingspan, or the way in which he downed drinks that caused the muscles in his throat to contract and release like the machine I’d so closely compared him to. Except, upon reconsideration, there was little mechanical about Dean. He was painfully human, and that’s where a lot of his problems seemed to lay, and that’s why I didn’t have time to daydream about such things. I was distracted by the fact that he’d had a childhood full of someone else’s, how his brother Sammy had essentially been dumped onto those very hunched shoulders, and how he’d never once complained. He still didn’t, twenty-two years later. And how, when Sammy left to do what Dean had encouraged him to chase after his whole life, the rest of Dean’s life had been shipped out to California along with his brother.

 

I certainly didn’t have the mental capacity to think about Dean’s voice, his mannerisms, the very way he held glasses, how he’d told me to keep the dubious amounts of change he accumulated, the way he was so defiant and insistent on not speaking to me, in some ridiculous fear of being seen as weak, and the way I’d finally convinced him otherwise. 

 

I was too busy learning about him. That’s all it was and all it would ever be, and all I had to accomplish was my victory.

 

Now, in the present time, I had found myself rather attached and interested in a girl of twenty two who had long, dark dreadlocks in her hair and who smelled fiercely of cigarettes and tears. The scent was fitting: she had a cigarette near its end in her left hand and her right hand was busy drying her eyes, smearing her deep purple makeup in the process, and I couldn’t help but feel my stomach lurch with sympathy at the sight of her. After merely one drink she’d had no trouble telling me the source behind her trembling lip and drippy eyes. She’d just been fired from her job as a secretary and it was the only source of income she had to support her younger sibling, for their father had abandoned them after their mother died tragically in a car accident. 

 

It stung some out of practice nerve to hear her relay her story to me, choked breath and all, and I found myself bent over the bar to hear her whispers. She certainly did not look the type to have such a broken spirit (when she arrived in the pub, I didn’t expect her to say much to me at all. Her attire made her look very intimidating.), but there was a lot of pain hidden under her heavy hair and her several layers of clothing and cosmetics. The pain was so fierce that I couldn’t help but feel it too. And when she’d reprimanded herself for spending her money on cheap drinks and cigarettes, I couldn’t help but do her a favor.

 

“The drinks are on the house tonight,” I announced to her as I poured her the second round of amber-colored whiskey. “I can see you need it tonight.” It was the smallest act of kindness I could think of compared to the hurricane she currently found herself lost in the middle of, but it eased the pain I was experiencing through hearing her story, so I was selfish in my methods. 

 

Her distressed face dropped into one of grateful relief, but her thank you was drowned out by her chugging the drink’s contents in moments, excited by the lack of money she would have to depart with that night. I felt like an enabler, to a point, but also soothed. Hopefully a night of breaking and letting loose would be what she needed to start back up again, to give her that necessary kick of motivation in her step to help her through her troubles. But, in the end, all I probably did was sprout an alcohol problem.

 

Soon after, I could tell she had finished her piece and I left her to her drowning tube of nicotine and sad addiction and moved on to grabbing bottles of whiskey, replenishing those we’d emptied that night. So far I’d poured a seemingly endless amount to three men who’d just returned from a game of late-night golf, after having broken into the country club they’d been kicked out of for “drunken horseplay.” Their clothes were stained so intensely with grass that the smell nearly drowned out those of the smoker just a few bar stools away. And while the lot of them was amusing, my old distraction had begun to spring up again, like the ghost of my new favorite regular was breathing down my neck. The warm air smelled of scotch and stale, unspoken words. 

 

That ghost didn’t depart for hours on end, not until the moonlight was seeping silver through the window panes, purple had painted itself under my eyes, and the golf team was stumbling out of the door with their green-and-brown stained white pants brushing loudly together. I watched them go through long, heavy yawns and through squinted eyes. Energy was not something that I had an abundance of at that point, but seeing that the time was only minutes before eleven sent a wave of dread through the drowsy parts of me. I still had hours to go, but no sign of my expected visitor. The dread was accompanied by a doubtful heart, one that felt weighted and unwanted in my chest, and I hoped that the dreadlocks girl was okay.

 

Thirty-one minutes past eleven, my eyes snapped open from their unintentional and sleepy droop at a sound that threw me into sharp consciousness and attention. My fingers rubbed the excess tiredness from my eyes as they struggled to focus through the dimly lit scene around me, filled still with those moon beams and vacant of any other members of the usual, unpredictable human company, except for the towering figure that had just entered with footsteps creaking loudly on the hardwood and breathing stiff, complete with long strides and shoulders moving back and forth to each step.

 

It wasn’t until the chime of the doorbell had long since ceased and Dean Winchester had seated himself in front of me that my eyes regained their full vision and I was able to physically respond to the new party of one. He looked up at me with the same ironic, fake smile and sparkling eyes full of more stories to tell, and that alone was enough to spark energy within me, set my interest and deadly curiosity ablaze, and I fought hard to ignore Charlie’s earlier remarks that were singing their tune of accuracy in the back of my mind like an ear worm. She wasn’t right, she was only pulling my leg like she always did. 

 

“Evenin’.” Dean announced with a small dip of his head while the corners of his lips pushed further into the red of his cheeks, the change in color obviously brought on by the chilled weather, and I watched for but a moment as he rubbed his sturdy hands together in an attempt to keep them warm. I didn’t even have a satisfactory amount of time to marvel at the fact that he’d been the first one to speak, and had done so voluntarily.

“I don’t believe it’s really the evening anymore…” I answered, but it wasn’t a serious reply, and I made sure to let Dean know this by giving him a brief, fleeting grin. He seemed to appreciate it and stopped rubbing the length of his fingers together so furiously.

 

“Yeah...I’m later than usual. Sorry about that.”

 

I found his apology odd, unnecessary even, and by the looks of it, he did as well. Instantly he cast his gaze downward and into his awkward and forced silences, something I knew he did out of habit, and I smiled to myself with pride at picking up such a detail. But my moment of self-absorption soon faded away as I answered him, eager to let him know that no form of “sorry” was needed. 

 

“There’s no need to apologize. We’re open until one AM, and anyone can come through within those hours as they please.”

 

Dean chewed on his lip, like he was trying to conceal some sort of amusement, before replying,

 

“Hah...yeah. That’s how pubs ‘n restaurants usually work, right?”

 

I was getting better at picking up on his jokes and humor, and I heard myself utter what sounded similar to a laugh, the noise so foreign to me that I felt as though it had come from somewhere outside of myself. 

 

“Yes, that’s typically how such establishments work.”

 

Noting that the brief exchange of conversation seemed to be over, I leaned under the counter and reached for the bottle of scotch I’d hidden behind a rack of glasses, a bottle that I’d earlier decided to reserve solely for Dean. I thought it was safe to assume that he would order what he always did. It was one of the things I’d recorded in my mind, under the file named “Dean Winchester,” that was slowly expanding. 

 

When I placed the bottle on the counter and went in search for a sufficient glass, I heard Dean let out something of a snicker and froze, wondering if I’d gotten something wrong already, but it seemed entirely impossible. Every time I’d served him he’d ordered a scotch without any ice, no questions asked, but now my throat was burning and my stomach was flipping over itself in the torturous suspense over what his laugh meant.

 

“Am I really that predictable?” He sighed, finally, and I felt like a balloon being deflated and all the worry blew into the wind. 

 

“I-I just tend to pay attention,” were my choice words, and they got the job done. Dean nodded his head and watched as I poured the liquid, like he was relishing in the way it sloshed against the glass, and I couldn’t help but notice that the color of the beverage matched the flecks surrounding his pupils. 

 

Charlie was wrong. She was only pulling my leg.

 

In no time at all Dean had put the glass to his lips and was letting the slightly-less-than-deadly poison into his system, and I was left to observe in a tense, solitary silence. Often times I’d wondered what it’d be like to have just one singular customer on a Thursday night, but my curiosity had not been so daring as to ask for that lone soul, the one that just happened to be the epicenter of my current turmoil, frustration and fascination, to appear seated before me, oddly sociable and friendlier than usual. It proved to be a much too intense situation for me to enjoy and I was torn between wanting him to speak again, just so his low voice could fill in the quiet that had settled like dust, and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to handle it for very long.

 

Among the things that I was struggling to handle was the way Dean’s throat was flexed upward as he downed the remains of his drink, and how his adam’s-apple bobbed upwards as he swallowed, and how I wasn’t able to watch without splotches of red appearing on my cheeks to complement the purple and blue circles under my eyes. 

 

Charlie was wrong. She was only pulling my leg.

 

The sound of his glass hitting the bar with force caused me to jump and nearly trip over my own feet as I turned around to face him. It seemed as though the sharp noise was his own, creative way of getting my attention, and while it was ultimately rude and startling, I appreciated it greatly because it meant that I was wanted.

 

“Hey...uh, Cas…”

 

Charlie was wrong. She was only pulling my leg.

 

Instead of making a bigger deal than necessary out of the fact that Dean did not only know my name now by memory, he also had made it his own by shortening it in a very simple way that I was surprised I hadn’t heard before, I just nodded my head, looked up, and responded with a plain,

 

“Yes?”

 

Dean looked troubled, like he didn’t want to say what I assumed parts of him were trying to force out of his mouth, and his vision fell as his hand grazed the back of his neck. I didn’t press him, I didn’t push to see what the source of his sudden need to speak was, I just waited, and the act did not go unappreciated. Once he deemed himself ready, Dean looked up at me with a softer shine to the eyes I couldn’t help but stare into, and my knees trembled. I faltered.

 

Charlie was wrong. She was only pulling my leg.

 

“I just...wanted to say that I’m sorry for the other day. I unloaded a lotta shit on you, and that sure as hell wasn’t fair. Hell, I hardly know you and now you’ve got all my problems swimming around in your head…”

 

He paused and rubbed the backside of his head again and I heard a sort-of laugh emerge from his lips this time, and it sounded just as far away, if not even more distant, than mine had. 

 

“I bet it gets pretty annoying,” he finally concluded, but he didn’t seem very satisfied with his ending statement and dumped the remainder of the conversation’s weight onto my suddenly unable shoulders, which were still quaking much like my knees. 

 

“It’s not annoying,” I managed to croak out, and with each syllable came a drift of relief from the load I was struggling to carry. “It’s part of my job...to listen to strangers ramble on and on about their lives and their issues. I enjoy it, really.”

 

The last part of my response didn’t seem like it made much sense to Dean and he sent me a quizzical look, as though I was without any pants and undergarments, and I felt a flush of embarrassment color in my neck again with a harsh red and a lighter pink on my cheeks. 

 

“And how exactly can you enjoy it?”

 

I shrugged my shoulders without meeting his gaze, but I felt it remain on me, a stare that was heated and intrigued, desperate to know more for reasons that continuously evaded me. Was this Dean Winchester only slightly buzzed, and interested?

 

“So many different kinds of people come through people with a lot of stories that are all their own. Sad stories mostly, but stories nonetheless,” I began, feeling meaningful words dance around on the edge of my tongue as some sort of send-off. “I’ve found that the best way to feel more at ease about those stories is to share them with an outside source, free of judgement or bias. It helps get things off of your chest.”

 

“You just happen to be that unbiased ‘shoulder to lean on?’” 

 

Again, I made note of the humor in his tone and I let it fill me up with a warmth that I knew for a fact that it shouldn’t be feeling, but I was in the middle of a conversation about not suppressing things and I wasn’t about to be hypocritical.

 

“Like I said, it’s part of my job. What better person to vent to than the bartender? They know that I won’t remember much of them, anyways.”

 

Dean nodded in peaceful agreement, seeing my point and appearing to be understanding of it, and I would’ve assumed the conversation to be over, assumed that I was due to go and busy myself with more pointless busy work until he needed something more, but the startling noise of him clearing his throat told me differently. “I should just give up on assuming things tonight,” is all I had time to tell myself in an internally exasperated tone before he picked up the sentence exchange once more. He had full possession over it now, because he was defying every previous assumption I’d had of him by simply using his voice and not being forced to do. He was supposed to be in the unsociable type, and not in the forever awkward way I was. His lack of interest in conversation and passing of social cues, ones that I often accidentally skipped over, was supposed to be a large part of him.

 

Where had that part run off to now?

 

“Nah, you strike me as the person that remembers things, remembers people. You wouldn’t enjoy listening to them so much if you didn’t.”

 

How in the world had he done that? How could he have known that, after hardly paying me any mind the past three times we’d interacted? His revelation sent more chills up and down my arms and, damn, did Dean Winchester notice and did he grin. It was a grin that could light up the moonlight-drowning pub and make it look like it was ten in the morning when the sun was free of clouds and its ray were the strongest. He grinned at me like he was as all-knowing as the sun, like he had nothing to lose, but knew he’d gained a key piece of information about me. 

 

“I suppose that’s true,” I admitted both defeatedly and in total awe of his sudden knowledge of me and of what was now our game. It didn’t sit right with me, and I needed to sit down. My knees hadn’t ceased shaking and his unavoidable stare of pride and what looked to me like victory, igniting those flecks like fires, was not assisting in any relief efforts.

 

“You must meet some pretty fucked up people then, hm? You must have a lot of cool stories to share about them!”

 

I could not pinpoint a location from which his interest was coming from, nor could I find a reason for his curiosity and inquisition, so my mind flatlined and settled on staring at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, until I should’ve weirded him out. It should’ve caused him to fade back into a reclusive silence, regretting even bothering to give me a chance, and he should’ve never flashed me his distracting grins or his forest-like stares.

 

Charlie was wrong. She was only pulling my leg.

 

“What, are you not used to people asking you the questions? You gotta have some stuff to tell.”

 

I locked my knees in place as to stop them from moving before answering, trying to regain whatever casual edge I’d possessed earlier, before Dean had become so uncharacteristically talkative and involved. 

 

“Yes, I do, but unfortunately it’s confidential. If I relayed to you what they’ve told me, I’d be betraying their trust.”

It was an honest answer, and one that applied to him as well. I wondered if he was intuitive enough to pick up on that. I wanted to doubt his abilities, perhaps in a vain attempt to make me feel more secure in the current situation, but I still wasn’t allowing any assumptions. They would just make me look more like a fool than I’d already accomplished in the short window of time Dean had been in my company that night. 

 

Dean dipped his head in defeat and acceptance, saying, “Can’t argue with ya on that one, I guess.”

 

He paused, but the pause was too short for me to act upon, and he who created the conversation’s lull beat me to it.

 

“But for real, does anyone ever ask you about you?” 

 

It was a strangely thoughtful question, one that I’d never considered before, though the answer that popped into my head, “no,” didn’t seem nearly as odd as Dean was implying. They weren’t obligated to ask about me; they weren’t obligated to do anything. And even if they had inquired about my personal life or asked questions about how my mental state was, I wouldn’t have much of an answer for them. I was fine. I wanted to listen to what they had to say, and that was all I’d be able to think of.

 

“No, they don’t,” I answered absently. “I wouldn’t have much to say to them if they did, anyways.”

 

Dean didn’t like that answer, and being me and given my job, I had to comply with what he wanted. 

 

“That’s bull. C’mon, what’s your life like? Got any siblings?”

 

Maybe compliance wasn’t too bad when Dean was asking for it though, and his interest translated in my mind into some kind of stranger-to-stranger care, and maybe after all the people I’d had the pleasure, and sometimes the pain, of listening to, I could confide in someone else for a change. It wasn’t me who’d asked for it, of course. I was just answering Dean’s inquiries so as to prevent him from being an unhappy customer. My job.

 

Had Charlie been right?

 

“Um...yes, I have four older siblings actually.”

 

My interviewer’s eyes widened in a way that far surpassed the contents of the conversation and I had to remind myself that he wasn’t all that intoxicated, and he hadn’t even asked for a second drink like he always did. 

 

“Shit, you’re the little kid of the bunch then?” He exclaimed, the sound of his jubilant voice reverberating off of the quiet and darkened walls surrounding us. 

 

“I’ve always wondered what that’s like…” were his closing words.

 

“It’s not the most enjoyable of experiences. I have four older brothers, Michael, Raphael, Lucifer, and Gabriel, and none of them are easy personalities to swallow.”

 

Dean sent me another one of his quizzical looks, still without judgement though, and I suddenly remembered how abnormal our collection of names sounded to those outside of the family, and even me when I was forced to list them aloud. I quickly hashed out an explanation, eager to avoid much talk on the subject of my siblings. Just like their personalities weren’t easy to handle, neither was my telling of our history together.

 

“My parents are very...religious. It obviously affected their choice of names.”

 

“Ah...cool. My old man used to be like that too.”

 

I didn’t dwell on the phrasing “used to” for very long in fear of getting irreparably distracted. Instead, I listened to the next question Dean had lined up to fire my way and busied myself with lining up my defenses, making sure they were as airtight as possible.

 

“And what are they all like?”

 

The first hole in those freshly-constructed defenses had been blown in, and I swallowed the mental pain to clear the lump in my throat and to free my voice. 

 

“Well, Michael is the overachiever of the group. He’s living in California I believe, with a wife and a good three kids. He’s always wanted a Jaguar as well-the car, not the animal of course-so he probably has bought one, or seven by now.”

 

Michael had never bothered to get close to me. By the time I’d come around, his life was starting, and I suppose he lacked the time and the patience to sit down and get to know someone who was not only years younger than he, but who also didn’t even hold a fraction of the potential in both hands as Michael had contained in one finger. I remember, vaguely, dropping him off at the airport and watching my mother kiss his cheek goodbye, an act of sentiment that we usually never saw. It left a pink imprint on his skin and I saw him wipe it off as we walked away, when I dared to turn around and sneak a glance at the perfect stranger who just so happened to be related to me.

 

“Raphael was the hard-nosed one of the group, and I believe it is appropriate to deem him the ‘asshole.’”

 

“There’s always is one,” Dean interjected with a smirk. I didn’t let my knees move.

“He went on to Harvard to study law and become an attorney soon after, and he’s living in New York at the moment, alone I believe, but sitting atop a large stack of money. My parents always bragged about him.”

 

Raphael was who people knew our family by, because they didn’t truly know him. He was evidently jealous of Michael and their relationship fizzled out the moment we left Michael to fly to the sunny shores. Raphael pushed himself after that, achieving nearly perfect grades and got involved in every club one could possibly think of, and I used to gawk over the perfection he’d achieved. In retrospect, I realized that he was not the only one involved in achieving it all, and my memory of him was clouded and stained by the way he’d demeaned each member of our family for being nothing but an obstacle to him, for getting in the way on his path to greatness, and I thought by the look in his dark eyes that he wanted to hurt me. Three days later, he left for Harvard and he got no kiss goodbye.

 

“Lucifer, er...Luke, was the odd one out, and I suppose there’s always one of those, too,” I continued, mirroring Dean’s quick remark about Raphael. “He’s full of dry humor, the feeling of being misunderstood, the need to be rebellious...those sorts of things. He used to recommend music to me.”

 

That sparked Dean’s attention, even more than what he was already supplying me with, and he threw out a volley of words almost faster than I could process.

 

“Aw sweet! Remember any of the bands?”

 

“Mostly stuff like Metallica, Megadeth, and a lot of Black Sabbath, so nothing too exciting, I suppose-”

 

“Dude, you gotta be kiddin’ me! Your big bro knew what he was talkin’ about.”

 

I just smiled weakly and shrugged my shoulders, thinking of the dozens of worn-in and torn tee shirts I had in the bottoms of my drawers at my apartment that used to belong to Lucifer. He’d given them to me when he’d left on his long awaited road trip across the country, also to California, with a boy that played guitar really poorly. He’d masked the obviously flimsy plans as a trip to see our long-lost eldest brother who was supposedly living in the same state, (no one had heard from him) and was gone in a flash and a bang and a screech of white-van tires. I don’t think anyone saw the dubious amounts of alcohol and orange pill bottles he’d thrown into his singular suitcase though, and it just reminded me of all the times I’d asked why Luke was so sad. His tee shirts made me sad now.

 

“And...Gabriel is the closest in age to me. He’s also the one that drives me the most crazy. He’s very loud, very rude, and has no filter. Somehow he landed a job as a radio personality and he’s living in Boston right now, with one of however many girlfriends he’s had over the years.”

 

I liked Amelia the best. Gabriel had a girlfriend when he was eighteen named Amelia, who had long blonde hair and a smile you would find on a toothpaste commercial, with a laugh to match. Once Gabriel and her had ended over what he told me was “a silly, dumb as shit misunderstanding that someone created to get back at me from some fuckin’ thing that I didn’t do,” he left. He called me a few times a month to make sure I was staying in school, not doing drugs or drinking too much, but he also kept me posted on his risky attempts to make it in Boston, and I guess someone found his voice iconic enough to stick it on a radio wave for mass amounts of people to hear. When he forgot to call, I found the radio station, listened through the static and the strained connection, and pretended like he was speaking to me directly. Apart from the poor signal, it was just as good as his used-to-be routine phone conversations. He was just as funny.

 

“And then there’s me,” I concluded, eager to snap out of memories that I hadn’t gotten the chance to think about or relive in ages, and I remembered why. 

 

“Just you? C’mon man, there’s gotta be more to it,” Dean insisted. His sudden burst of blind faith in me made even less sense than his interest had a few minutes before. 

 

“Not really. I was just the average one of the group, which is fine by me. My brothers are all so different that it made life rather awkward. I like just being me, no matter how normal I am. It’s easier that way.”

 

I wasn’t lying, at least not at that point in time. But immediately after those words had passed my lips, I began thinking too much and regretted letting Dean bring my family up. The flashbacks gave me too big of a headache to focus much and I had to be concentrated if I wanted to succeed, and at that point it seemed as though Dean was racing ahead of me. I was left helplessly struggling to keep up while I was swimming through the sound of each of my brothers’ voices, confused as to why I could remember Michael’s most vividly and Gabriel’s the least. 

 

Dean, again, wasn’t satisfied by my answer and substituted it with his own without any sort of filter or thought as to what he was truly saying.

 

“Well, I think you should give yourself more credit, cuz you’re a pretty damn good bartender a not a bad listener.”

 

The flattery colored in my skin again and, apart for me searching frantically for what his reasons were for now being so nice, I managed to say something polite in response. 

 

“Thank you...I like to think that I know what I’m doing, if only a little bit.”

 

I needed to change the subject. I reached under the bar for the reserved bottle of scotch, fought the urge to jump at the coldness of its surface, because apparently my hands had grown hot and sweaty within the conversation, and reached to retrieve Dean’s empty glass that lingered just outside of his reach. I could feel him watch me as I did so, his lack of protest giving me the go-ahead, and I poured. I poured slowly and listened to the noise, hoping it would drown out the heaviness of Dean’s breathing and the drum-like beat of my own blood through my veins.

 

“Oh...heh, thanks…” He murmured once the newly replenished beverage had been returned to him. And I suppose I was still a little high off the conversation, off of the memories that were just beginning to forcefully fade away, or off the discreet but nonetheless present complement my companion had handed me with impeccable ease and casualness, because I couldn’t bother giving Dean the trouble of paying.

 

“It’s on the house,” I finally announced weakly, not able to take the perplexed look Dean was giving me, though I was beginning to suspect that he was simply mirroring whatever foolish expression I wore.

 

Dean swallowed and his throat stretched, contracted, and ceased movement, but not before I’d memorized each fluctuation and each step in the process. He blinked twice and then stared, but not before I could paint a mental picture of the long lashes on each of his eyes. And his lips moved to speak, parting slightly before retreating back as if lost on words to say, but not before I could trace the ridges on their surface with my eyes. 

 

“Thanks, Cas.”

 

His voice wasn’t far away anymore. If anything, he was speaking directly into my ear with no space between us, with no filter or obstructions. It was the purest exchange we’d had yet, and perhaps that was why my knees had grown weak once more, my fingers wrapped mercilessly around the bar’s edge, and why I was silently thanking whatever power there was above me, the power that had given my long gone parents the crazy, out-of-the-box notion that naming their children after angels was a good idea, that there was no one to witness my moment of undeniable faltering. 

 

The source of my faltering was sipping leisurely, yet gratefully, at his drink without a care in the world gracing any section of his features. If anything, the slight buzz in his system that was dilating his pupils made him seem even more bright, more captivating, and I wanted to know how he was doing that, how he’d taken control of that conversation, what in the world he was trying to accomplish, and just what the warm, excited feeling in my stomach and lower abdomen was. It was like grasping at straws, but with three blindfolds on and with a clock chiming midnight in the background, and it took me ages to find any sort of reason or answer. 

 

I did find one in the form of a lesson, a lesson that a certain redhead had taught me seven whole days ago about how one is supposed to know when they’ve come in contact with the person they’re meant to spend the rest of their lives. I thought of the eye locking, the heart stopping, and all the cheesy, painfully juvenile aspects she’d taunted me with in an attempt to bring color to my cheeks and a smile of achievement to her face. It looked as though she would be succeeding, twice.

 

But the most important point of the lesson she’d taught me, or, more rather, the point that I’d drawn myself, was that the idea of soulmates was entirely, totally, completely, and wholesomely fictional.

 

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, you have reached the end of the fourth installment, and I hope you have found it at least satisfactory! I'm a little more behind than usual at the moment, since I'm not quite done with part five yet, and with school fast approaching, I may struggle with the current weekly schedule. I will do my best to maintain it though, as long as you promise to be understanding if it becomes too much!


	5. Like Father, Though Not So Much Like Son

It was raining outside again, though I didn’t really see how it was possible. It was a chilly thirty-one degrees outdoors and my breath had been visible and foggy in front of me as I raced down the street and into the only slightly warmer walls of my apartment building, and I blew into my hands as I climbed the creaking steps until I reached the third floor, trying my hardest to be adamant in keeping up with my physical health since it felt as though the majority of my time was being spent at the pub, and marveled at the dull noise the freezing raindrops made as they hit the windows’ thin glass. The end of November was a time most often filled with heavy snowflakes that blanketed cars in an impenetrable shield of white, a time I usually dreaded, but I agreed that icy winds and frozen water droplets were better than a soaked overcoat.

 

Removing that same waterlogged overcoat could be compared to peeling away a layer of skin that was glued onto you. I suppose the process was considerably less painful, but equally as annoying and time-consuming, such that I couldn’t even be bothered to place a towel under my coat rack to sop up the water dripping onto the tile floor below. It was a mess I would deal with in the morning, I decided, and one that I would inevitably slip on in the process.

 

I chalked up my passiveness and lack of will to the exhaustion I was feeling, like a weight tied to my ankles that slowed me down with every step I trudged through, and the burning of my eyelids told me I’d certainly overworked myself. Even my head, which was more often than not buzzing at an unhealthy rate of seventeen miles anyway, seemed bogged down, sleepy, and drained, throbbing with the excess information it had been stuffed with that night. But no matter how helpful it would’ve been to expel some of it, I didn’t. I just couldn’t. Especially not when the newly acquired anecdotes and stories had been told to me through the words of Dean Winchester.

 

The walk in the chilled rain had started at the pub, after I’d closed up shop for the fourth day in a row since Charlie’s want to alleviate me of the task seemingly evaporated into thin air and memory, once the clock had chimed one in the morning and Dean Winchester had left the premises a little more sober than usual. I liked to attribute the increased amount of coherent thoughts and the lack of dangerous alcohol pumping in his system to the awkward yet slightly charming and kind conversation we’d kept going for the better part of two hours. It was one of the few pleasantries that kept my spirits from falling into the murky puddles below my feet on my journey homeward.

 

After Dean had paid me his odd compliment, calling me both a good bartender and “not that bad of a listener,” and after I’d repaid him by ignoring the usual price of his beverage, we somehow fell onto the topic of Dean’s own brother, Sam Winchester. I’d gotten the general, overall picture of who Sam was during Dean’s previous visit, but it proved to be very beneficial to hear the less intoxicated version of things.

 

“Sam was always a total genius,” Dean had remarked, with a distant sort of pride illuminating his eyes. I couldn’t help but stare and listen.

 

“I mean, straight-A, willpower of a machine, golden study habits, and teachers’-pet but-in-a-cool-way kind of genius. I used to just kinda stare at him and wonder ‘how?’ ya know? I was never like that, but it was sure awesome as hell to watch him grow up and become it.”

 

“And when he started talkin’ about goin’ all the way out to Stanford, I tried to level with him, explain to him how god-damn impossible it is to get into a lawyer-and-doctor mine field like that, but he still wanted to try. Hell, he clung to the idea of gettin’ in there and moving away.”

 

I voiced what questions I had once he paused, trying my best not to be rude, 

 

“Were you unsure of whether or not he’d be accepted?”

 

The way Dean’s face had fallen after hearing me say that send stabs of guilt into my stomach, as well as the feeling that there was far more to the story of Sam and Dean than he’d previously told me. The desire to know eventually beat out whatever guilt I had, anyways.

 

“Nah...that’s not what it was. I think it was just ‘cuz I didn’t want to be left alone at home after so many years.”

 

His smile didn’t fool me for even a fraction of a second, and I took note of the way he immediately took a hearty swig of his drink after saying something of sentiment, wondering if it was some kind of defense mechanism, a way of collecting himself as to not being forced to answer questions directly after his contribution. Or, perhaps, the digging up of past thoughts just caused him what he deemed to be unnecessary pain and alcohol was the quickest remedial process I knew either of us would be able to think of.

 

“But he left, and I’ve barely heard from him since,” he continued, after seeing I was in no position to reply or interrupt his piece. I was too intent on listening to it in full.

 

“And basically his ultimatum was ‘I’ll come and visit if Dad agrees to hop off my ass, and if not then I won’t be seeing you guys for awhile.’ You can probably guess what the outcome was.”

 

“I’m proud of him though, really. He and my dad were always fighting, bitchin’ to one another about something someone said, or did, or didn’t do...the whole nine yards. I guess it was good for him to get away from an environment like that.”

 

If Dean thought I was so socially incapable that I couldn’t pick up on the undertones lurking in the depths of his voice, which, I found, grew increasingly shallow the more swigs of scotch he took, he was very wrong. Perhaps his own memory was hazy, but he’d relayed to me several instances where his father’s drunken episodes had gotten way out of hand, even offhandedly mentioning where the episodes were physically visible on his own skin, when he’d been under the usual influence. My own voice felt constricted and strained at the thought and recollections of what he was referencing, whether he was aware of it or not. And in fear of bringing up a subject that he would shut down at the sound of, I’d chosen the safer option.

 

“What is Sam interested in?”

 

Dean’s expression changed, the corners of his mouth drawing upward into a sad sort of halfway-there grin, but instead of the small indication of happiness inspiring the same sort of emotion within me, it brought a secondhand kind of nostalgia, and I knew Dean was imagining Sam explaining to him just what he was interested in doing with his life. I imagined that his older brother was one of few people that Sam was able to confide in.

 

“Law. Gonna be some lawyer one of these days...the next Judge Judy is what I told him,” Dean answered. “He gets mad at me when I say that.”

 

“That’s very ambitious,” I remarked. Sam Winchester was shaping out to be someone to idolize.

 

“Yeah, he’s an ambitious kid. It’s always worked out for him though.”

 

I drummed my fingers on the bar’s surface, considering what to say, what cards I should play next. It seemed as though he was just about done talking about his younger brother, so I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try to draw the conversation full circle and loop it back to him. 

 

Clearing my throat, I asked gingerly, “And what about you? Did you attend college?”

 

And upon voicing my following question, I was met with a sound that I surely did not expect in the least: laughter. Dean Winchester was laughing. It was a laugh full of self-doubt, of a sense of failure, and the sense that he just couldn’t care less at that point in time, but it was a laugh nonetheless, and it was three times as loud as the doorbell had been each time I’d wanted to rip it from its position on the door. Fortunately, his laughter was not a noise that I wanted to be rid myself of.

 

“Hell no. After doin’ alright in high school, I was done being taught things like that. Just wasn’t something that I was into.”

 

“I work down at our good friend Bobby’s auto shop now, fixing deadbeat cars and makin’ phone calls,” He said quickly after, as if attempting to defend himself in fear of making it look like he wasn’t all that important. I, in contrast to his belief, was utterly fascinated with his life and his life’s choices, as well as the fact that I’d been indisputably right. 

 

“Cars are something you’re passionate about, then?” I chimed in, wanting to confirm my theory once and for all, but mostly just wanted to hear him say what I knew aloud. 

 

“Definitely. Nothing like gettin’ under the hood of an old clunker and making it roar back to life again. It never gets old.”

 

Dean stopped himself suddenly, perhaps realizing that a look of total, utter love had painted itself across his face, and I may have found the expression humorous had I not been so distracted in my internal yet largely important victory: I’d guessed that Dean Winchester was an avid lover of cars several days ago, and now it was a proven fact. I was getting better. I was getting closer. 

 

“Sorry,” he murmured after a few moments of cringing silence, though I hardly saw the need for an apology if it was something he truly cared about and loved. It was pleasing to see the light of happiness, no matter how distant, come alive in his eyes for a change. 

 

“That probably sounded a bit creepy,” he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. Habit.

 

I was quick to act on his statement of regret, excited that he was sharing something positive and personal with me, feeling somewhat honored.

 

“No, don’t apologize, especially not for something you enjoy. It’s admirable, really.”

 

Dean faltered upon hearing my reply, in a way that was startlingly familiar to me, and I could’ve predicted his words whole minutes before he said them, but instead I settled on waiting, and testing the second theory I’d had that night. Hopefully this one proved to be as true as the last.

 

“Heh...thanks, Cas.”

 

It was nothing short of a difficult task, trying to pass off the sentence as nothing more than common courtesy. There was just an unidentifiable something about Dean Winchester that lead me to believe he wasn’t one for saying thank you often, and there was no denying the warmth it brought. I had a hard time picturing the feeling being purely one-sided. 

 

I don’t think I answered in the way that was appropriate, which would be something resembling a “you’re welcome,” and there followed a brief yet awkward silence that I felt sting the air around me until my scrambling for something to help the conversation resurface. Unfortunately, Dean’s passion was not something that I found myself well-versed in.

 

“What car do you drive, if you don’t mind me asking?”

 

He didn’t mind one single solitary bit and sat up straight at the thought of his own vehicle, which I could tell he worshipped and loved like a partner by the look in his eyes. It was hard not to smile at the adoration...or not to smile in adoration.

 

“1967 Chevy Impala, four-barrel, V-8 engine, four-wheel drive...the works.”

I nodded my head in a false sense of appreciation, not because the car wasn’t something to be proud of, but because I was lost as to what he was describing to me. The words sounded nice, the car sounded nice, and the way Dean was daydreaming of the vehicle parked just outside was nice too. 

 

“Sammy has no clue when it comes to that stuff…” Dean interjected suddenly, and the mention of his brother shocked me into an even more intense form of attention. Where in the world had that come from?

 

“He’s probably savin’ up for one of those stupid Honda hybrid cars, the ones that look like mini-spaceships or something like that,” he said with disgust, but those undertones were echoing underneath his voice again, and I could hear the traces of that eternal brotherly love. “I always hate when someone brings one of those to the shop, ya know? Why not just go by a new one, if their mass-producing them so cheaply anyways.”

 

Again, I nodded my head in agreement, trying to portray myself as deep in thought and understanding, but simultaneously praying that he asked me no questions on the subject, that I could just be left to keep agreeing politely. I’d come too far to make a fool of myself or be caught up in my halfway lies. Does politeness excuse dishonesty? I didn’t believe so.

 

“What about you...you into cars or anything? Know much about ‘em?”

 

My hopes, as well as my defenses, shattered on the spot. He would know I was a fraud, giving up truthfulness for the sake of being relatable, creating conversation. I could feel my throat tighten with the embarrassment, my cheeks flush, and heard some distant voice I believed to be my own speak in a pitiful kind of redemption, but it was just a bunch of stammers and barely there syllables. 

 

“Oh, well, I know some but...it’s never really been-it’s never really been something that I’m very well-versed in…”

 

The sinking of my heart and the urge to sigh, one that I fought tooth-and-nail to repress, had me convinced that whatever conversation I’d somehow managed to stay engaged in had ended, and in something resembling a trainwreck. I’d blown my chances, let them crash and burn, and it was all I could do not to shrink away and fall back behind the safe walls of the kitchen, perhaps confide in Charlie in hope of lessening my embarrassment. Whatever “I told you so’s” she could conjure up were certainly worth an escape route…

 

“Aw, that’s a shame. Lemme me know if you’re ever interested in learnin’...cuz like I said I got one hell of a ride out there.”

 

Circuits blew throughout my head at his reply. 

 

Dean looked at me with the purest of stares, the kind in which I could pick out no ulterior motives or any hidden drawbacks, and he was just being nice. Simply, kindly, completely, and naturally nice, and it wasn’t registering with me. What did his offer mean, was there truth to any of it, or was it his desire to keep creating small-talk kicking in, combined with the intoxicating side effects of his beverage? Regardless of the cause, I myself felt a strange sense to comply and accept, even though the mechanics of cars was not something I cared about in the least. It was like an abnormal pull forward that I was finding difficulty in resisting, yet there were so many signals going off in my mind that I had to stop and think.

 

What he had just said, within the current context, along with the tone of his voice and the raise of his eyebrow gave me the discrete, barely-there impression that he was implying something other than simply kindness and the help to educate me further in what I considered to be an overly-masculine form of a pass-time. Flashbacks of Charlie’s countless lessons on social cues and the scary world of relationships came to mind, causing me to swallow hard and bite my tongue. That was a matter to be thought about a different and more private time.

 

“Thank you, Dean...I would appreciate that,” were the words that I eventually settled on, said to my conversing counterpart as I looked him straight in the eye and without and sort of faltering. I meant what I said, and I began to hope Dean had meant what he’d had the nerve to say as well. 

 

One o’clock came too fast after those last few sentences died down, once the buzz had faded, and the night could been seen painting its way across both of our sleep-deprived faces, the bags under Dean’s eyes more accentuated due to the chemicals pumping their way through his strained veins. It was with a sad heart and a feeling of longing, if that was the correct term, that I informed Dean that we had to close up shop, but just like he’d been laid back with everything else that had occurred or been said that night, he left without a drop of annoyance. He’d even left a significantly less amount of spare change, this time the amount of money placed in front of me only exceeding the necessary amount by one dollar, and I watched him leave through blurring eyes and with a thumping heart.

 

“Bye Cas...and thanks for tonight.”

 

The door gave a ding and his hefty, tall, and dark form had disappeared into the very same rain before I could blink and think of a decent response, and when my vision focused to see him gone, the swoop of energy that had come over me upon Dean’s arrival vanished. I found myself gripping the bar’s edge for support, scanning the seat Dean had been sitting moments before over and over, and wondering just what I’d been through. It took me a great deal of time to actually get moving, close down the pub, and enter into the dismal, dreary rain myself. It’s cold sheets served as a rude, less welcomed form of energy than what my usual yet still elusive regular had supplied me with. 

 

And that’s where I found myself now: sitting in my apartment and debating whether or not I had the energy to shower that night while my insides were still mildly frozen from the rainstorm, or wait until tomorrow morning in fear of the warm water droplets drifting me off into sleep while I was in the middle of bathing. Eventually I did choose the latter and changed out of my day clothes in a sleepy sort of fashion, and the only part of me that seemed to be awake and functioning was my mind, and it was busy replaying the scenes from that night.

What had Dean’s sudden willingness to confide in me meant? The amount of information he’d relayed to me about not only his brother, but his relationship with him and his hidden fear of being left alone with his father, no matter how passive Dean had tried to bring it up, was striking. I’d even nabbed the chance to confirm my theory about his passion for cars, more so than I ever thought possible. And even his out of the blue comments, no matter how discrete or casual they were in nature, had left me a little bewildered, to say the least. 

 

That bewilderment carried far into the night, kept my bloodshot eyes open and staring plainly at the ceiling as I lay in bed, covers pulled up to my chin, and no matter how badly the other parts of me begged for sleep, cried out for the chance to recharge, I couldn’t shut it down. I couldn’t convince the pieces and fragments of my mind, mostly my imagination, to let the details slip away into my memory, to chalk them up as an effect of the very substance I was employed to sell, and I sure as hell couldn’t stop myself from analyzing every syllable, every inhale and exhale, and every small little undertone and hidden meaning I’d thought I’d detected throughout the night. There just had to be more.

 

I was unable to believe that what had happened that night, was had conspired between Dean Winchester and I, was simply just a pleasant conversation. It didn’t fit a single element of Dean that I’d learned thus far, so I knew there were more meanings, I just couldn’t seem to figure them out, no matter how many hours I gazed at my ceilings, counting the grooves in its popcorn surface as if I had nothing better to do with my time. But, in fact, it seemed like my time was spiraling down and out, circling the drain and teasing me with each minute that passed by where I was in Dean’s vicinity. 

 

It felt as though Dean was just hours from knowing me, learning my quirks, playing me, and beating me at that god-forsaken game. That had to be his motive for engaging in such an uncharacteristically civil and yet slightly tense conversation. That had to be it. It was closure, it eased the insanity in my head, it helped relax and close my eyes, and dim the light in my head. And I clung to that closure like a safety blanket, like it was the only thing separating me from the rain outside, still paddling against my windows and gutters, and drew it up to my cheeks along with with my blankets. I hung on to it through the night, let its ignorance and denial warm me up from the inside out, and ignored what I was so desperately fighting to push away. 

 

Because in reality, that closure was just a shield to what I knew was true somewhere underneath the disguise of the game, of my used-to-be intentions, and of my dismissal of Charlie’s words and her lesson on the art of soul mates. Deep down, I wanted the lesson to be true, and I wanted to be living it then. 

 

***

 

“Dude, you’re not looking too hot. Did you get any sleep last night?”

 

I swallowed hard, hoping to remove some of the pain sputtering outward from somewhere in my throat, probably the dryness caused from my poor night, and shook my head slowly to avoid activating my headache from that morning and, unfortunately yet predictably, I wasn’t very successful.

“Some, but not enough,” I admitted to my wide-eyed interviewer, who had ceased her scrubbing to send me an inquisitive yet mostly concerned stare. 

 

“Why, is it that obvious?” I continued. Darting over to a dusty, rusted old mirror hung behind the bar where I was stationed, cleaning its surface as diligently as I could without nodding off due to the physical exertion, I took note of the bags under my eyes and the general sunkenness of my face. Yes, it was painfully obvious. My question to Charlie lost its meaning or purpose, but still she answered with a minute smile of sympathy on her face.

 

“Well, apart from the purple under your eyes and your zombie-like movements...yeah, it’s still pretty obvious,” Charlie said, chuckling quietly to herself, but the humor soon dissolved once she made her way over to me and leaned against the part of the bar that I hadn’t got to cleaning yet, forcing me to stop. I was trying not to become irate, just wanting to continue my work without any interruption, because more interruptions meant lesser energy and lesser chances of me making it through the day in one, conscious piece.

 

“Oh...that’s great to hear…” I murmured, exasperation evident in my voice. Evidently, that false closure I’d gotten hold of the night before had come far too late, and by the time I had to start my day, I’d gotten merely half the appropriate amount of sleep and the side effects of such a change were making themselves evident in my features. I’d realized the state I was in just before leaving for work that afternoon, but my foolish and apparently selective optimism had managed to convince me that it wasn’t all that bad, that it wasn’t too noticeable. At that point, the only thing frustrating me more than the frequent interruptions was my own stupidity and my one-night stand with insomnia.

 

“What’s got you up at night then? This is highly out of character for you, don’t cha think?” Charlie continued as she cocked her head to the left in interrogation, and I wished her concern would leave so she would too and so I could get on with my day. I wasn’t excited to slave through a Friday night shift and deal with so many predictables at once when my mind was clearly and entirely elsewhere, and other people’s pestering was certainly not making it any easier, even though it was Charlie and I knew I owed her several benefit-of-the-doubts.

 

“It’s nothing...I just had a difficult night yesterday. That’s all,” I confessed, the partial truth I was concealing tingling at the tip of my tongue, daring to be said but refraining from admitting the whole truth to my friend. I wasn’t ready for the I-told-you’s that were sure to come my way, hot and spewed from her lips at the mere sound of her victory over me. 

 

“Everyone was cleared out by like eleven though. Couldn’t have been that difficult. Did something happen at home?”

 

The sincerity dripping like ooze off of each syllable she spoke was making it increasingly difficult to shut her out and not feel rude in doing so. She couldn’t know the truth of the matter though, no matter how caring she came across as, for I had little chance of surviving the swell of embarrassment. 

 

“N-no, nothing like that…” I whimpered. It was like being cornered by two equally as impending and strong foes: one being Charlie knowing what had really deprived me of my sleep, and my denial making her frustrated and angry with me. 

 

“Well then what is it? You’re not gonna get off that easily, Castiel!” She exclaimed, suddenly jumping up and down on her feet, but not before we both heard a third party enter the room from the kitchen whilst tying a spotless apron around his waist. He, being Kevin, had obviously taken it home to be washed for the fifth time that week. 

 

“It was that Dean guy, right? The guy in the leather jacket that stayed till we closed?”

 

Just like that, my throat began to close up, I was feeling lightheaded, and my knees were wobbling just like they’d been less than twenty-four hours ago when Dean, apparently the newly brought up topic of conversation, had been so keen to be kind to me. I must’ve stared at Kevin, wide-eyed and full of disbelief, betrayal even, though I wondered how he could betray me without knowing that I’d been fighting fiercely to keep Dean’s name from Charlie, for a good forty-five seconds before realizing his dark, brown eyes were trained elsewhere. My despair and inner turmoil went unnoticed. 

 

“You guys talked forever. I would’ve offered to close up, but I didn’t want to interrupt anything...hope that’s alright?”

 

Of course, Kevin’s main concern was whether or not his work practices had been done in the right, but with one glance in my direction, his face fell with dawning realization that he’d said something of worth, yet had done so unknowingly. I watched as the confusion envelop his expression, slowly but surely. 

 

“W-what?” He stammered, looking frantically between both Charlie and I. “Did I say something?”

 

I opened my mouth to speak, to say something that would not only calm the storm that had just started to rain down between the three of us, but ease my own nerves and hopefully deflate the sickening grin of correctness that was painting itself wide and true across Charlie’s front. Unfortunately, despite her change in emotion and obvious excitement, my redheaded opponent beat me to the punch and got the first word in.

 

“No, you said nothing, Kev, nothing of import,” she announced, voice hurried and rushed as if to shoo him off. In my mind, I begged him to stay, because at that moment, he was the only thing standing between Charlie’s temporary silence and the confrontation I so desperately did not want to have. I tried to grab his attention once more, but he was too captivated by Charlie’s alleviation of his guilt or worry of what his words had meant.

 

“Oh...okay then...I guess…”

“Here, will you do me a big favor?” She continued with too much enthusiasm in her voice to be considered normal, but I suppose Kevin hadn’t known her long enough to detect it, or perhaps I was just being my insane, analytical self, the self that gotten me into that current mess.

 

“Yeah, sure thing. What do you need?” He replied. I wanted to shake him and scream at him to deny the offer, reject the question, though I bit my tongue instead. Quite literally. 

 

Charlie suddenly dug into the side pocket of her dark jeans, removing the pointed bulge and tossing it to Kevin: her car keys. Even through my panic, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the action and wondered just what kind of request she had in store for the poor, always-able soul. Kevin was sadly and terribly difficult not to take advantage of. 

 

“There’s two whole crates full of pretzels in the trunk of my car that I need for tonight, since we’re almost out, and I have to talk to Castiel about something in private. Would you mind getting them for me?”

 

Kevin looked at the keys for a long while, contemplating the awfully easy yes-or-no question, before nodding his head yes unsurely. I wished he’s just acted on that uncertainty, for with his choice to ignore it came one of the most embarrassing conversations I’d ever had until that point. And besides, Charlie had taken in the crates of pretzels upon her arrival approximately twenty three minutes ago, and seeing her struggle with them had been my only source of happiness for the entirety of that day.

 

Why was I still literally biting my tongue?

 

“Yeah, no problem…”

 

And with that, Kevin gripped Charlie’s keys in his forever-shaking hand and walked, half backwards, towards the rear entrance of the pub, shooting me uncertain, partially guilty, and all-together confused looks as he went. No amount of desperation or soundless pleading from me could convince him to stay, it seemed like, and I was forced to simply listen to the sound of his fading footsteps until the back door had closed and Charlie’s vision immediately flicked onto my still form, the gaze so heated that I had to turn away.

 

“You took the pretzels into the storage room earlier today, I saw you,” I announced, like a blatant and unnecessary description of the elephant in the room, and I scolded myself over and over again for only being able to speak after Kevin had departed, when any words from me were deemed utterly useless. 

 

“Yeah, I did. But Kevin doesn’t know that, and even though they’re not in the car, Kevin won’t give up because God forbid he do something wrong. It’ll keep him busy for a little while.”

 

“Why do you need to keep him busy?” I retorted, and the lack of necessity invested in the statement was enough to choke on. I knew just why she’d done what she did.

“Because, Cas, we have some very important business to discuss, you and I, and privacy is essential.”

 

I shivered with the effects of her ominous statement, and couldn’t help but gulp heavily as she looked around, rapidly, left and right, as to make sure we were entirely alone. I often found myself to be an enjoyer of lonesomeness, but in that moment never had I wanted someone else’s company more. The light of excitement and the need to know came over her and it was all I could to brace myself for the oncoming storm of questions with answers that I wasn’t able to vocalize. 

 

“So,” She began, foreboding locked tightly in her tone. I couldn’t tell whether she was being dramatic to purposefully drive me mad, or if the subject at hand really meant that much to her. 

 

“What’s the deal, hm? With you and this Dean guy.”

 

That was it: the million dollar question, and the correct response attached to it like a pricetag was one that pained me to read aloud.

 

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I replied. It was my first line of defense.

 

“C’mon, you know exactly what I’m getting at. Why all the interest in him? And don’t deny it like last time! I’m not fooling around here.”

 

She did sound oddly serious, and as if the current swell of emotions I was undergoing wasn’t enough already, she had to go and add more confusion to the mix. Why were my thoughts on Dean Winchester so vitally important to them, and what did she really expect to find within them?

 

Regardless, I wasn’t able to look her in the eyes anymore, and I knew from countless experiences with those numerous strangers I conversed with for a living that lack of eye-contact was a definite sign of lying or avoidance. I distracted my own line of vision by staring at my hands, fingers fiddling with the button attached to the sleeve of my shirt, though it was hardly sufficient in its purpose.

 

“If...if you’re referring to what Kevin said earlier, I can assure that it’s nothing. I was just being sociable, that’s all, since no one else was at the bar…”

 

“Okay, there’s two things wrong with that argument.”

 

My first thought was that I wasn’t arguing, but the one that immediately followed was an overwhelming punch of hopelessness, like someone was forcefully holding my head under freezing water. 

 

“One: you’re not what most people would call the usual kind of sociable. I have a hard time believing that you were just talking to Dean for the heck of it, that isn’t something you do.”

 

It irked me how correct she was. 

 

“Two: maybe I would be able to disregard number one, but just the other day we had an entire discussion about this same little predicament you got yourself mixed up in, all this Dean Winchester business, so now I know you’re full of it. You got feelings for the guy.”

 

The tail end of Charlie’s retaliation sent me spinning, made me dazed, smacked me hard in the face and didn’t bother assisting me in getting up. Despite my minute form of admittance, the kind that I’d to mask with closure the night before, and despite the fact that I was aware, somewhere, that I did think of Dean differently than the other strangers I’d come to be acquainted with, I never thought others would notice so acutely, much less confront me about it. 

 

“I’m just trying to convince you to act on it,” She went on, her voice increasing in severity. “I don’t want you and your lack of people skills--which I do love you for, don’t get me wrong--to get in the way of a real chance here, okay?”

 

A real chance? A real chance at what? I started to question whether her motives and mine were on the same page anymore, but couldn’t bring myself to speak up, so I waited and listened, suppressing every objection and every embarrassment I felt.

 

“Really, no judgment here, okay? You should just go for it.”

 

“He’s into you, too, I think. You should see how he looks at you when you’re talking.”

 

“Like I said, just slip your number on his napkin or something, nothing too fancy.”

 

“Heh, maybe it’d actually get you to check your phone for once-”

 

“Charlie, I think you have the wrong idea here,” I said, finally being physically able to interject my say into the exchange. She seemed slightly taken aback by me speaking, but held her tongue if she planned to protest, and her listening was greatly appreciated. 

 

“Dean seems...alone. He doesn’t tell people much about his life or what he’s going through at all, so I believe he’s simply confiding me to get a lot of his emotions and anger off of his chest, and not without the help of a couple drinks.”

 

I saw Charlie open her mouth upon my pause, but, in a strange turn of events, I was the one to beat her to the punch, and I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t satisfying.

 

“He just needed someone to listen to him, unbiasedly. That’s all, and that’s all I am to him. A listener. Nothing more.”

 

I thought my statement had driven the point home well, strong, and true, and left no room for error or retaliation. I should’ve planned better though, knowing Charlie’s knack for debate and always being correct in situations similar to the painful one I was trapped in, and she still shocked me with her reply. Her reply blew me backwards, into next week, and into a defeated sort of submission.

 

“That may be...but the real question here is: what is Dean Winchester to you?”

 

Several instinctive answers battled to reach the surface, fought for domination and victory. The first was the defense: Dean was nothing more than a regular of mine, a face I could recognize and a story I could retell, much like the hundreds of other passerbyes I got the chance to meet, and there was nothing special about him and our abnormal sort of connection. The second was complete denial, the kind of dismissal that drove Charlie up walls and merely egged her on to pry deeper and deeper, until she reached whatever well of information she needed and danced in the leaking waters. For her sake, that would’ve been the first one I hid and drew back into the swell, but the third instinct proved to be the most problematic:

 

She was right...in her implications, at least. Judging by the sound of her voice, and the presence of those same undertones I’d spent the entire night replaying in my memory, there was more to her final argument than an outside eavesdropper could detect, but I understood. She knew there was more to my story and reasoning than I would ever let on, and suddenly I felt as though I was under the gaze of an X-ray machine, my insides lit up and open for the public to see, and she was reading me like a book. (I hoped to God that this wasn’t what those I spoke to at the bar felt like.) It was as if she’d been sitting feet away from me during my late night crisis, watching each of my layers peel back until we stumbled upon the false closure I’d held like a security blanket, and there was just no stopping her from seeing straight through that, as well. 

 

I believe that, at some point and after much too long of a silence, I opened my mouth again to speak, sew together some weak thread of a response upon impulse, but the sound of the back door creaking noisily open startled the both of us out of our words and my head turned sharply to the right. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved of the pretzel-hunter’s arrival or to dread it, because the rest of the night would be spent in an awkward, hanging sort of position with the rest of the conversation between Charlie and I dangling just above our heads while Kevin, ever the clueless one, would be kept out of the loop. Quickly my attempts to refrain from becoming irate had vanished; the already boring Friday night was shaping out to be the worst I’d had in a long time. 

 

“Hey, you sure you brought the pretzels? I looked everywhere but I didn’t see any-” Kevin began, a worrisome glint in his dark eyes. Charlie extinguished it swiftly.

 

“Oh, my bad. I forgot, I brought them in earlier today,” She answered, strolling towards Kevin with the skip of victory in her step, grabbing her car keys, and advancing back into the kitchen with hardly a glance in our direction.

 

“Thanks though,” She chimed, and the double doors bustled back and forth behind her. Within seconds, I could feel Kevin’s eyes train on me.

 

“What’s gotten into her?” He demanded, teeming with concern. “What’d you guys talk about?”

 

His question helped me begin the process of clearing my head, pushing the impending doom of her ongoing interrogation further back into my head until it was just an annoying ringing in my ears, and shook my head no. In retrospect, I think I performed the action too forcefully. 

 

“Nothing of any import, she was just asking me about someone I’d met on Thursday,” I said. I wasn’t lying, and that served as a comfort.

 

Kevin gulped before replying with a shaking tone, “It wasn’t anything about that Dean guy, was it? Cuz if so, I’m sorry man. I didn’t think it really mattered, or else I wouldn’t have brought it up.”

 

He looked truly, perpetually guilty, and Kevin Tran was someone it was just impossible to be any sort of upset with, seeing as though he followed through on every favor, every task, and every job asked of him with at least one-hundred and ten percent effort, and I couldn’t hold it against him anyways. The confrontation was bound to happen eventually, I should’ve seen it coming the previous night, and it wasn’t like he was the one asking the questions. Charlie was the one who deserved my anger and my frustration, as well as all the mind-boggling thoughts and question circling in my brain like vultures, waiting for the next event to occur and die out so they could swoop in and pick away at it.

 

But, in all honesty, was it Charlie’s fault? It was just in her nature to be naturally curious, naturally inquisitive, and despite her semi-intrusive methods, she meant well. I sensed concern in those damned undertones and even the desire to help, but my blame needed a target. I needed a center, a point of concentration, and the only person I could think of left was the very epicenter of it all, Dean. Yet, that didn’t sit well with me.

 

“No, it’s fine, Kevin. You didn’t say anything...not knowingly at least.”

 

Kevin did not look consoled, not in the least, but I couldn’t be bothered with any of the formalities of friendship and “healthy work relationships,” and besides, I could see the first wave of customers rise over the distance, and I needed to focus. I needed to rid myself of distractions, and keep the farthest away from Charlie as possible. While I hated ignoring her, I wasn’t able to take her stares and her raised eyebrows and just the simple, plain fact that she knew. She always knew, but it felt like, on that occasion, rubbing salt in an old wound. 

 

My saving grace turned out to be one that I wasn’t too pleased with, but I knew not to be too picky when it came to such things. The fact that it was a predictable, cut and dry Friday night served as somewhat of a comfort to me, due to the lack of surprises it posed. I knew who would arrive, what they would order, how long they would stay, and how to deal with them all as a whole and individually. It would stress-free, relaxing even, and then I could crawl back home and spend the night drilling Charlie’s stinging, burning victory into all the unwilling parts of my head as I stared as those stucco bumps in my ceiling. Mental anguish was something that I saved for my home life. 

 

But, again, that was later. The only thing I had to routinely stare at while I was at work was the rusted hands on the clock which seemed to drag on agonizingly slow, and around ten-forty-nine I could’ve sworn that they’d frozen in place. I was in the middle of a particularly long and dreadful story, told to me through the lips of a college junior, consisting of his promise to me that he’d seen a ghost routinely for three weeks now, telling him to breakup with his girlfriend because in the distant future she would cheat on him with his uncle, of all people. I was asking for the ghost’s appearance, as if the shade of dead that her eyes possessed would make the tale any more bearable, when I wondered if the clock had stopped at the odd, unspecific time, staring at it for a good twenty seconds while the storyteller went on about her unruly hair, and let my mind wander.

 

And it was in that period of time, the time that I spent staring at something hopelessly unimportant, that I missed something with a monstrous amount of importance. My vision had not only strayed from the terrified and smashed frat boy, but from the door itself, which I’d promised to keep an eye on just for the slim amount of entertainment it provided. I did not believe in ghosts, something that the horrified college boy did not grasp nor even attempt to understand, so his tale had little to no effect on me, and catching glimpses of all the faces that arrived served as something to do, a passtime. 

 

As I said though, I’d missed something important. It came in the form of the door bell clanging over the Friday night commotion, like a beacon throughout the decipherable chaos, in the form of a tall, more than six-foot figure walking with heavy, stomping footsteps to escape the cold, and in the form of familiar green eyes, freckles, and a sad slump that I’d hoped had vacated his system. Something had brought it back…

 

just like something had brought Dean Winchester back, and a whole six days early too.

 

The ghost didn’t matter anymore, or mattered even less than it had moments ago, and became nothing but invisible background noise. I probably should’ve eyed the frat boy’s drink, just to make sure he wasn’t running low and so I could add to my countdown of when to cut him off for the night, but my bartender-duties flew into the air and evaporated on contact, like dust being blown off an old surface. The only thing I was focused on at that very second was how he dragged his feet lazily to the other end of the bar, the corner closest to the kitchen door, and the only one that was majorly unpopulated, and sat down clumsily. He didn’t raise his eyes, didn’t scan his surroundings, and didn’t even bother to apologize to a woman he, rather rudely, bumped into on his journey to his seat. 

 

A rule in bartending that I tried to uphold very strongly was that the newcomers must be served before the older ones were refilled, and often times it was difficult to follow such a ruling since my goal for each night was getting to know at least three people, and that required long periods of uninterrupted attention, but that night was already shaping up to be drastically different. I had little to no trouble abandoning the storyteller, whose hip I felt painfully attached to, and exchanging him for the familiar face at the end of the bar. It felt as though a strange sense of obligation was pulling me towards him, towards whatever clouds of whatever was plaguing his life were hanging over his drooping head, and I was in no position to resist. I didn’t want to resist.

 

He looked absolutely miserable, as if all the spark and intoxicating energy he’d possessed less than twenty-four hours before had abandoned him, and it worried me. It worried me sick, rendered me shaking to the point where the walk to his end of the pub was much more laborious than it should’ve been, and cut off my imperative ability to speak. So, as a consequence, I found myself standing, board-like, with my hands pinned at my sides and my mouth slightly parted with unspoken words and beads of embarrassment, now turned into sweat, running down my forehead. It was the first time all night that the enclosed space, mass amounts of people, and increased body heat had started getting to me.

 

“Hello...D-Dean…” I managed to croak, cringing inwardly at the strain in my voice.

 

Dean’s vision flicked upward with more speed than he’d shown in the whole six minutes and forty-one seconds he’d been at the bar, and I saw the lights of recognition illuminate somewhere in his pupils, a satisfying process to watch. I noted the easing of his expression, evident in the lessened crease of his brow and the relaxation of his jaw. He was relieved to see me, and it nearly floored me.

 

“Oh, hey Cas,” he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck in the oh-so predictable way he did. “Wasn’t sure if you worked Fridays.”

 

Some social opportunity dung in my head.

 

“Well, I wasn’t sure that you came on Friday nights. I guess this situation could be called rather unusual.”

 

He smiled a smile that brought an equal amount of relief to myself, but instead of pride at my ability to ease his tension, I felt nothing but a strong mix of sympathy and anxiousness. Most people, or those who had specific days during which they made their rounds at their favorites pubs and beer houses, never typically strayed from their schedules unless something dreadful had happened or they needed the aid of alcohol to alleviate whatever new struggler or stressor had come up in their lives. So, in an attempt to find out, I went to work scanning Dean’s facial features even more closely than before.

 

He was exhausted, more so than he had been before, to the point where the bags under his eyes had surpassed the normal shades of purple and had entered blues and blacks until they appeared to be pushed back into his angular face. His lips never shut entirely, a sign that he had little energy running in his system, and I could hear each deep breath he took like the air was rattling around somewhere in his lungs. Combined together, I estimated that it had been at least thirty-two hours since he’d gotten any time to sufficiently recharge.

 

Secondarily, I made note of the creases on the right side of his face. One may think it was the imprint of a pillow, but I thought differently. Dean’s hand was trained intently on his left pocket where I could see the bulge of his phone emerge, and it was the only part of his body that seemed to be carrying out a task with a large amount of precision. The creases and lines streaked across his cheek and ear were from a phone, and judging from their intensity and his finger’s grip around his cellular device, he’d recently had a very important conversation.

 

“Heh, I guess you could say that…” he replied. I blinked at the sound and out of my studying, back into reality, and into my panic over what to say. My plans for a relaxing, void-of-excitement Friday night were certainly out the window at that point.

 

But before I got too lost in my concerns and plans for the rest of the night, I decided to fulfill the first part of my duties to each customer and forced myself to say only a few words. 

 

“What’ll you have?”

 

“The usual,” was his answer, and boy did it make me grin.

 

I knew what the usual was, and the satisfaction in having that knowledge far exceeded that of beating Charlie to the punch during our earlier conversation. As I poured the scotch and made sure to add no ice to the sleek glass, I longed for the day when the action became muscle memory and needed no instruction, for when it was instinct, and for when the impending nerves of speaking to this Dean Winchester were but a distant memory of an awkward past-

 

Charlie.

 

I went rigid, the glass held firm in my fingers until their tips ached with my grip’s strength, and I could feel her eyes like bullets aimed for the back of my head. My ears tuned in on her voice as she thanked a few customers sitting at a booth to my left when they got up to leave, the only noise interrupting her speech was the sound of their legs practically tearing from the seats’ surface, and I knew she’d seen me. I knew she could see Dean, sitting pretty and heartbroken and mysterious a few paces away from me, and I knew she could see the drink shining brightly in my clenched fist. And I myself knew that whatever chances I had left at proving her spot-on theory wrong had fluttered away, as delicate as the wings on a butterfly, and I cursed the butterfly effect theory as I walked back to my customer.

 

Dean took the drink gratefully, pouring back a hearty swig, grimacing only for half a second at the smoky heartiness of the liquid, and slammed the half-emptied glass down on the counter. That was also habitual, and it usually preceded his announcement of something, or told me he wanted me to initiate the conversation. Unfortunately, in that “rather unusual” situation, the action depicted the latter, so I delivered.

 

“Is everything alright?” I chimed, emanating as much casual, platonic, and still stranger-like concern as I possibly could without my voice trembling at how false it was. “You seem a little out of it, if you don’t mind me asking.”

I watched Dean’s reaction, gaging his willingness to answer, and felt my spirits raise as he opened his mouth to reply, eyes trained on my face, but panicked when they shifted focus. He was looking somewhere behind me, and a smirk of amusement was playing across his lips. I didn’t want to admit to myself what my theory was about what, or who, more rather, was the subject of his gaze.

 

“Uh, I think someone’s trying to get your attention, Cas,” Dean whispered to me, still staring at what was now a someone stationed out of my direct line of vision. In that moment, I would’ve bet a million bucks that this someone had red hair, tied in a bun, and was gawking at both Dean and I. But, just to make sure, I turned around slowly on my heels, like an elderly machine creaking to life, to get a look for myself.

 

“Sorry to interrupt...but this poor guy’s been waiting here for a good ten minutes in need of a drink, and the bartender currently on duty seems to be a bit distracted.”

 

As predicted, Charlie was now standing behind the bar, rubbing her hands clean on a rag as she motioned to ghost story boy with not anger, disappointment, or annoyance in her eyes, but a the look of all-knowing, of victory, and snide. My teeth ground against each other in anger and just the general misfortune of the moment. It was very conflicting to have Dean there, off schedule, and be so unrequitedly happy about it, but also be cursing the inconvenient time. 

 

“Oh...sorry about that,” I said hurriedly, my words mashed together into one breath. “Um, what are you-”

 

“All the guy wants is a Coors Light, Castiel,” Charlie answered once I arrived at the scene, swinging her arm around me as she flung her rag over her opposite shoulder in that casual, carefree way she seemed to always do things in, including embarrassing the hell out of her coworkers. “Woulda thought you’d remember, ya know, being such a good bartender and all…”

 

I wiggled my way out of her grasp, now feeling another, more imperative pair of eyes staring at the back of my head, observing a scene I did not want him to witness one bit, but it couldn’t be helped. Dean Winchester arriving for a few drinks on what was now a hellacious pre-weekend night was the furthest thing from my mind only eleven minutes earlier, but now it was all I felt capable of thinking of. And, along with many other things that I did not care to admit to her, Charlie knew that, too.

 

“Well if you haven’t noticed, it’s been a little busy out here and I have a lot of orders running through my head at the moment,” I retorted, a little absently, as I retrieved the proper beer for sir paranormal, doing my best to ignore the sly incline of Charlie’s lips, and I wasn’t keen on hearing her reply in the least.

 

“Oh, well if you’re too busy, perhaps I could help out back here? I’m sure Kevin would be fine with waiting tables...if he doesn’t embarrass himself too badly within the first fifteen seconds, of course…” She suggested, with an innocent voice but stingingly devilish intentions. I nearly had to shove both my hands into my pockets to prevent them from quaking with nerves and a frustration I’d never felt towards Charlie, of all people.

 

“N-no, it’s alright, I can handle it,” I replied, keeping my tone as level as possible, though judging by the way her eyes met mine, lit up with mischief and amusement at my expense, she was perfectly aware of the mental strain she was forcing onto my already weakened shoulders, since I was presently carrying Dean’s load. “I wouldn’t want to put Kevin on the spot, of course.”

 

Throughout our discussion, Charlie’s blue eyes never left my own, and she seemed to thrive on the effect the gaze was having on my poise and stature. Internally it was crumbling to pieces, threatening to collapse in full at any moment if the awkwardness she’d flung into the air didn’t dissipate soon, but I managed to mask the destruction with a clenched jaw, trembling fingers, and a peculiarly level sound of voice. The drawbacks of being so close to Charlie were slim, but one was being enacted in that moment: she knew every quirk I possessed like it was written in black ink across my reddening forehead.

 

“Oh, of course,” she answered finally with arms crossed around her chest and her leg jetting out in a calm, leisurely sort of stance. The only response she earned from me was a curt nod and silence.

 

“If you have it under control then, I’m gonna go make sure that lady I just saw walk past didn’t blow chunks in the bathroom,” she added, and I watched the ghost story boy’s eyes widen for a passing second at the blunt grotesqueness of her statement. “My puke senses are just tingling.”

 

Again, my choice of reply was an abrupt dip of my head, but I wasn’t able to carry out the simple action without some sort of distraction that resulted in fault: as Charlie padded delicately away, making sure to weave in and around me to further the scene she’d just made, she threw me a swift wink, and I nearly blew my cover. It was all I could do to not burst at the seams, berate her for her ignominious tirade, but I was not known for my public outbursts of anger, or for my anger at all, so I found myself chewing on the inside of my lip instead, panicking over the damage she and my distracted nature had caused. 

 

The only sure way to prevent her from returning though was to carry out what she’d offered me help in doing though, and I had every intention of keeping her at bay. Upon instinct, my head turned to the right to observe who now looked like a lone ranger, seated in his own secluded corner swirling the remainder of his drink around in its glass, and I felt guilty for abandoning Dean. The look of pain, however internalized it may be, was still clear across his face, yet I was not in a position to drop the task at hand and help alleviate it. 

 

Some sort of godsend occurred, however, in the seconds that followed. Dean must’ve sensed my gaze and turned his own head upwards. I sent him a sorrowful look, trying to convey my apologies and that I had to serve other people for the time being to prevent another interruption, and to my literal euphoria, he dipped his head in a much more courteous nod than I’d given Charlie, followed by a slightly gauche pursing of his lips and a thumbs-up. It was his own, ridiculous way of letting me know he understood, even egging me on to do my job before singling him out. It was an understatement to say that it gave me great joy to be served with such a friendly gesture, and an implication that we’d be able to “discuss later.” Filled with a new determination, I went to work.

 

For the first time in my career, or at least the first time that I could remember in several years of being stationed at that bar, I didn’t take the time to hear everyone out. Asking them about their evening, smiling when they shouted in their already drunk speech, obviously arriving from another pub, and making their drinks was as far as I was willing to travel that night, and the lack of depth in the actions nearly drove me crazy. It felt incomplete, shallow, wrong, and the fact that no one else involved in the exchanges seemed to think so was almost just as troubling, but the goal I was aiming for at the end of the evening was more maddening than those depicted annoyances combined into one.

 

Every so often, between my gazes at Dean, which he returned by shooting me a similar, sympathetic look that mixed rather unsuccessfully with his poor mood, I glanced briefly at the clock and watched as the eleven o’ clock hour dwindled away, as well as the swell of people. Soon the bar was far less crowded, and those who still remained by fifteen minutes past midnight were on their last few drinks of the night, the limit drawn by myself, because despite my thorough observation of them, I still could tell when they needed to be cut off. The last thing I needed was someone coming down with alcohol poisoning and completely ruining the night for good.

 

Empathy, Castiel. Empathy is important.

 

Yet, eventually, despite every setback that had transpired over the course of that hour and a half or so, I found myself in a long lull of a pause, one that was long enough for me to engage in a true conversation with that goal had filled me up with that new, foreign kind of motivation, a kind that I did not often get to experience the vigor of. I remember distinctly scanning the scene around me, making note of Charlie speaking to two women of or close to her age, who I assumed she found interesting in a way other than the pleasingly social way, and Kevin, who was busy delicately holding plates and glasses in and on top of his arms and taking them back to the kitchen. Both were absorbed in their tasks, and neither were capable of interrupting. Perfect timing.

 

I approached Dean with shocking ease, probably driven by the long interval of time I’d been forced to properly carry out my job, but upon reaching his hunched form, shoulders low and weighted down by the load of his signature jacket, my throat decided to cease working, and enabled me only to stare in wait before Dean noticed my presence, and I knew one of those days my odd way of just watching was going to get to him. 

 

“You guys were really busy tonight, hm?” He asked, arching his neck upwards so we could speak face-to-face.

 

“Yes, very, but it’s nothing abnormal. It is Friday, after all,” was my answer. “Er, it was Friday. It’s twenty-two minutes into Saturday now.”

 

I watched Dean sigh, lips blowing together as the air blew past his mouth, before he said, “Heh...is it now…” Promptly after, however, he cleared his throat and decided to be charitable by speaking once more. I was already out of ideas.

 

“Don’t Fridays get kinda boring though?” he inquired with something close to a scowl as he observed the remaining customers now spread out far and wide across the hardly vast landscape we both were standing in the center of. “I mean, it seems like the same kinda people come in over ‘n over again.”

 

I agreed, strongly, though was marveling at his insight. “Yes, very. There aren’t many new faces that show up on Friday nights. It’s mostly just college students, the standard drunkards, a few women with said college students at their tails...nothing too exciting or unusual.”

 

After taking in my response, Dean’s face darkened with humor over whatever slick reply had popped into his head, egged on by the drink he’d consumed, and I waited on the edge of my seat to hear it.

 

“So, does that mean I threw you a curveball by showing up tonight?”

 

There was no sense in lying: the fact that he was right was evident all over my face and in my mannerisms. His appearance had blown be backwards, thrown off my entire night, and yet, somehow, I managed to devote its remainder to him. It was funny to me how it all worked out. 

 

“Very much so...to be quite honest,” I answered, unable to fight the pull my current emotions had on the corners of my mouth, drawing them up into my cheeks to form the smallest, most discreet of smirks. I could see from the outskirts of my peripheral vision that the same expression was written across the face of my companion but, yet again, it didn’t mix well with whatever anxiety was flooding his system, and I remembered my original mission: I had to discover what was so plainly wrong.

 

A deep, rumbling noise came from the base of my throat as I cleared it, alerting Dean that I planned to speak, and hopefully implied that it would be a statement of worth. And while I hoped he didn’t mind my prying, my desire for inquiry got the best of me, and I was rid of my self control. 

 

“Dean...if you don’t mind me asking,” I began, trying my absolute hardest to be as polite and estranged as possible. If I came across as too personable, too concerned, I feared he would retract back into the shell of silence I’d only recently convinced him to emerge from.

 

“Is everything alright? You seem a little down.”

 

Dean sighed again, the emotion along his features described earlier falling into line with the exhale of air, and he looked all together as if he wanted to let go, fly into the wind, and leave behind whatever what plaguing him so. And then he rubbed the back of his head, and though I didn’t smile, I acknowledged the habit, and ticked it off in my mind as something I’d officially memorized.

“Damn, am I that transparent, or are you just that good?” he said, exasperated, but now looking at me once more and searching for an answer. I would’ve responded in full with the latter, the second option hinting at how much I was able to collect about him, but quickly evaded that plan in fear of coming off as prideful and unnervingly creepy.

 

“Perhaps a little bit of both…?” I suggested with mostly sarcasm, and the joke was well-received. I soon corrected myself by saying, “No, nothing like that. I’m just able to tell when a friend appears to be sad.”

 

Friend. 

 

No, what had I done?

 

The word wrote itself all over Dean’s face, stung in my throat and the aftertaste set my tongue ablaze with the prematureness of the phrase and the embarrassment it lit up inside of me. I watched the process of recognition in Dean’s eyes and waited on the edge of my toes for his reaction, desperately running through the different scenarios to pick out the best way to deal with my foolishness, but one stood out the tallest among the others: repulsion. I could just picture the way the emotion would look across his scrunched up front.

 

“Ah damn it, friend-zoned already? I didn’t even have a decent chance, man.”

 

I wondered when my knees would give out for good, or when the wiring in my head that kept me sane and socially able would permanently fry up, or when the flushing of my neck and cheeks would completely blow my cover, the cover that I still wasn’t ready to admit to myself all the way. I knew that if Dean kept saying things of that caliber, regardless if he was serious in his words or not, the end would be fast approaching. Hopefully he didn’t notice the way my fingers were digging into the bar’s edge for support until my knuckles were white with the pressure.

 

“N-no...nothing like that…”

 

My words were hushed and quickly deemed utterly useless, and judging by the way Dean’s eyes grew in sight at the way my face had reddened and the way my voice had dropped considerably in volume let me know, for sure, I’d been exposed, but I didn’t bother looking in his direction until many tension-filled moments later because I wasn’t in the mood to risk a peek. It would surely prohibit me from speaking anymore.

 

“Well, if you’re really interested, 'friend',” he began, the amount of intrigue pumping through my veins almost enough to combat the adrenaline and utter confusion at what in the world had possessed Dean to say such a thing? 

 

“My brother, Sam, called me a few hours ago to tell me that he’s stopping in for the weekend to visit my dad and I.”

My memory jumped back to the previous nights where I’d learned all there was to know about Sam Winchester and his relationship to his older and extremely different, in every sense of the word, brother, Dean. It had been made very clear to me that Sam had no intentions of keeping up with the few members of his family that he had, and Dean was very hurt by that (though that tidbit was one that I had to infer on my own.), so this latest revelation of news came as quite the surprise to me, especially since it seemed to have developed all in the twenty four hours we’d been apart.

 

“You remember him, right?” Dean continued, causing me to snap out of thought that I hadn’t even realized I’d been consumed in, and I nodded my vigorously, eager to let him know I’d paid attention to what he’d relayed to me. Perhaps it would make the “friend” word ache a little less.

 

“Yes, of course,” I replied. “It...it seems like this was rather out of the blue though, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

 

Dean’s eyes widened as he bobbed his head “yes,” indicating that I was in the right to make such a remark and that he agreed, strongly. 

 

“You’re tellin’ me…” he began, letting his hands cascade down his face as if to wipe away the stress and exhaustion that had accumulated atop his brow. “I haven’t seen the kid in what, like two years? I have no idea what he’s thinking, coming down to visit now…”

 

While his current response to the ordeal told me otherwise, what I knew about Dean and how the two brothers had grown up lead me to believe that he wasn’t dreading the visit in that he couldn’t stand to see his younger sibling, but instead, he was scared of what would come of it. Terrified even, since nothing else I could think of would drive him to come to a crowded bar on a Friday night. I needed to play my next few responses carefully.

 

“And how do you feel about it?” I questioned, trying to remain as neutral a party as possible as not to put thoughts into his head or offend him by disagreeing. “About Sam coming to see you and your father?”

 

Dean shook his head incredulously, like he was lost for words or had lost the ability to speak them, but I didn’t press. I simply waited for the response to come to him, and it did, after another swig of his drink. I would offer him more of his favorite stress-reliever after he finished his piece.

 

“I mean...I’m happy about it, I guess. It’ll be nice to see him again after so long but…”

 

“But what?” I voiced, but it was in a tone just above a whisper. 

 

Dean chewed his lip like he was afraid of saying the reply that had come naturally, and I tried to soften my expression and the overall tension of the situation as much as possible. It looked like speaking whatever was on his mind was the most sure-fire way of easing the turmoil he was in, and just like that I realized where my best interests laid.

“It’s not gonna be natural. Hopefully he won’t be too pissed at me for stickin’ with my dad, not leaving him at some point, but even if we’re on okay terms, my dad ‘n him hate each other’s guts,” he explained, pausing to take a deep breath inwards. “There’s no way in hell that’s it’s gonna end up good.”

 

“Your brother seems to have faith that it will turn out well. I doubt he would come otherwise, right?” I suggested in sad, pitiful attempt to amend his negative outlook on the idea. 

 

Dean merely shrugged his shoulders passively, like no matter what words came past my lips, they wouldn’t lessen his anxiety or the severity of the situation, and it created of well of sadness caught somewhere in my chest.

 

“He’s always been the kind to look on the bright side of things,” Dean whispered once a few moments had passed, with a wonderfully fond tone to his words. “But I don’t know, he could be in over his head with this one.”

 

There was so much more there, lurking behind his choice of replies and the mask of casual annoyance at what was coming. I knew, just by watching the way he sipped his drink (lips quivering, pointer finger drumming on the glass surface) that he was horrified of the outcome, but I had a hard time believing his father was all there was to it. He’d said it himself: he was concerned that Sam would be upset with him for staying by his dad’s side. There was guilt there, the anxious nagging of possible dejection.

 

“Besides your father, what has you so worried?” I asked, rather starkly, suddenly determined to find the basis of the problem, the root of his fear, desperate to lure the right words from his mind and attempting to steer clear of coming off as too persistent, too insensitive, because that was the last thing from my fast-paced, racing mind.

 

Again, Dean shrugged, and then he rubbed the back of his neck, and I ticked the action off in my head. 

 

“Eh, I don’t know...I just haven’t seen the guy in a while. He’s probably changed a ton, gotten into different stuff, the works,” he admitted, slowly but surely, similar to an animal being gingerly let out of a cage. I was just weary of the instant where he decided to snap at me. In hopes of preventing such an event, I refrained my speaking anymore, and let Dean continue at his own pace. I watched his face darken at its own pace, as well, and the swell in my chest grew deeper.

 

“Sammy and I have always been different, really, really different,” he started to explain, a distant, nostalgic gleam glowing along his face, before it converted back into the darkness. “He was about schoolwork, books, gettin’ those straight A’s and being the best kid he could possibly be. He was entirely self-driven, did all the work for himself, no one told ‘em to. I, well, I wasn’t like that.”

 

He laughed dryly, the sound weezy and ultimately false, at what I thought was a rather sad, yet hard to trace, comment bringing down his own personality and life choices, and it certainly did not strike me as a statement to be laughed at. Regardless, I continued to listen intently to every breath that passed his lips, recording the sentences and the ways in which they were said in my head with utmost care.

 

“I was more of a ‘live in the moment’ kinda guy, went through tons of girls during school, drinking whenever my dad was outta sight...the works. I barely scraped by, really. Not cuz I’m dumb or anything like that, I just...never had the room to care.”

 

I cocked my head to the right in question, confused by his conclusion and eager to be informed more. Dean didn’t seem to understand my expression, however, and shot me a similar look, but I couldn’t help but notice how dark those circle were, draped under his eyes like thick layers of fabric. It was draining him to speak about his family matters.

 

“Where...where did that room go, then?” I said, voice shaking and eyes barely able to make feasible contact.

 

“My dad took it, I guess. If I wasn’t fuckin’ around, I was being told that I wasn’t good enough for Sammy, wasn’t good enough for the family, wasn’t good enough for him...the works.”

 

I was worried that maybe Dean would be able to hear the tearing sound resonating deep within my chest, the noise of my heart snapping with a sudden sucker-punch to the gut, the fist taking the form of his past and his uncharacteristic will to share it with me. In that moment, those words that had been drilled into Dean Winchester’s subconscious by, of all people, his father were scrawled across every inch of exposed skin like black tattoos, unable to be concealed though regret and shame was obviously in them. 

 

“Your father must’ve been very hard on you,” was all I remember saying, and I wanted to wrap his hand in mine and try to stop its shaking. 

 

“Oh, you shoulda seen him and Sammy,” he started, and the tears in my heart grew deeper at his denial, at his dismissal of his own pain. 

 

“They would just scream at each other, not agreeing about anything. He had plans, places to go, but my dad was so adamant in staying together, ya know? We were a family, we stuck together, and leaving for ‘fucking college’ was the same as abandoning your family in his eyes. But Sammy had worked his ass off for it, and wasn’t about to let it all go to waste, so he left. Hasn’t looked back since.”

 

He paused and finished off his drink in one foul swoop, and maybe I would’ve watched the way his long, scruff-dotted throat contract as he swallowed the liquid, but I was too busy gazing miserably at the flush of color in his cheeks, not brought on by the alcohol, and the crestfallen look of pure dejection in his eyes, and I imagined an old slideshow playing back in his mind of those shout-fests. I needed to stop asking, I needed to close up the conversation for his sake, but that thought didn’t occur to me fast enough and didn’t arrive in time to prevent me from uttering something I deemed immediately afterwards as completely unforgivable.

 

“He was hardest on you though, correct?”

 

I wanted to retract within myself the moment the sentence passed my lips. They sounded as though they’d been spoken by a being outside of myself, a distant piece of my mind that had no filter floating above the scene, and I observed with horror as the syllables and the breaths in between cast their effects down onto his already melancholic face. There was such a dark moment of realization, of admittance, and of pushed back memories within him that he couldn’t even look forwards, and the guilt was consuming me from the inside out, starting with my mind and seeping into every corner like ink dripping off of a rain-soaked page.

 

The one thing I did not expect however, during my mental failure and his breakdown of his inner self, was for my shattering companion to speak, and validate the irreparably insensitive theory that had crawled from the depths of my head. 

 

“Yeah...I guess you could say that.”

 

In a barely there instance I saw his eyes flick towards his empty glass and I dashed for the bottle of scotch, conveniently located just nearby where the two of us were stationed, and poured its substance into the glass with fumbling fingers and an acutely focused ear. Because something was surely possessing Dean; he was explaining.

 

“I got the brunt of things. I got the beer bottles thrown at the wall and the shakes and shoves and the ‘you’re worthless’ talks, you know, the aftermath of his episodes with Sam. Those were usually the more intelligent screaming matches...mine were pretty one-sided. But Sam never knew about it, and I kept it that way for a reason.”

 

Upon receiving his latest beverage, Dean eyed it up thoughtfully, though I wasn’t sure what was so captivating about a glass of rusty liquid at the time, and clutched it firmly, his long fingers wrapping around its whole. And, in a volley of very deliberate and very desperate movements, he threw the drink back and swallowed it hole. The burn it must’ve caused couldn’t have been pleasant, but it was the result of that burning that Dean needed to get through his rendition of his childhood: an absent, worry-free mind, free of the chance of consequence.

 

“You’re probably wonderin’ why the hell I stayed with the man for so long, while I still support him today,” he said with an increased volume and a vain attempt at humor evident in the sound, though I had to admit his statement did align with my inquiries. 

 

“Well...look at it like this: you ever get so used to somethin’, somethin’ bad and probably unhealthy, that it becomes a norm in your life? You expect it to be there, and it’s weird when it’s not?”

 

I tried to place myself in his shoes, understand his attempt at being relatable, but the only example I could come up with was an alcoholic, and I was not one. I lied though and nodded my head, eyes wide in a blind sort of horror over what I was hearing firsthand, though nothing could bring me to speak.

 

“It’s kinda like that, I guess. Without my dad and all the shit he put us through, I wasn’t sure who I was. If dad was fine ‘n great, I wouldn’t know how to be a brother to Sammy, or how to do things on my own, or how to be strong. If he hadn’t done what he did, I guess that would mean I couldn’t teach Sammy how to not do those things. So...in some twisted as fuck way...it was worth it. He turned out alright, didn’t he?”

 

I read once in an article online, a science article about emotions humans experience in relation to physical reactions, that there was a phenomenon called frisson, or the feeling of getting chills or goosebumps on one’s skin after hearing or experiencing something of great emotional value. When I read it, I couldn’t relate to it much, much like I couldn’t relate to Dean’s explanation of his bond to his father, but now I had to change my stance. I felt like a cool breeze had consumed me, wrapped its cold arms around my middle, and my heart was in two. 

 

The amount of self-sacrifice Dean Winchester had gotten himself obsessed with was sickening in the most depressed, aching way possible, to the point where I could nearly feel secondhand the emptiness that had to be eating away at his mind at that very moment and at all hours of the day. The dependency he had on his little brother, who was now living miles upon miles away without any clue about just how much his brother is torturing himself and missing him, while Dean was left behind to sit within his own turmoil without any resources to help him pull him from it. I couldn’t understand how his family could’ve left him like they did, it was a concept beyond my comprehension, any possible reasons they had out of my reach. 

 

“Geez man, I’m sorry,” Dean announced, startling me and crashing my train of thought. What in God’s name did Dean have to be sorry for? 

 

“Here I am again, unloading all my problems on you again. You don’t need to hear this stuff…” He murmured, the guilt and shame dripping from his mouth like blood from an open wound, one that Dean wouldn’t let me tend to, though I wasn’t just about let him lay there in a pain that I couldn’t bear to even witness take place, let alone hear. 

 

“Dean,” I began, shocked at how loud the sincerity in my voice was, but not at its presence. “Stop apologizing so much. It...it really can help to let these things out, and its no good keeping them bottled up.”

 

I took a long, crisp inhale of tense air into my lungs, letting the energy within it light up my lungs, before speaking once more, hoping it would drive home the point.

 

“I’m happy to listen to you.”

 

Dean smiled in that way I’d watched him do before, one that could be misleading to some, but I had it mapped out. It was a smile full of awkwardness, the inability to truly admit to accept any form of complement or sentiment, but it let me know my concluding statements had been acknowledged, and that alone brought a smile all my own to my face, though it was one that I tried my hardest to conceal. He didn’t need to be aware of the way my heart’s pulse had increased, or the way I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, or the dampness within the palms of my hands, or even the thoughts running through my oxygen-deprived head. 

 

“Ya know, to be honest,” Dean began. The appearance of apology was no longer painted across his face or dulling the shine of his eyes, and I knew this for sure, because they were staring right at me. And, much like I had, Dean took in a mouthful of air before filling the anticipation-ridden silence with his gruff, deep, yet oddly sweet and charming way of speech,

 

“I think you’re the only person.”

 

It didn’t even matter that Dean had downed the last of his drink at that point, and that it was messing with his mind, increasing the incoherentness and decreasing most levels of intelligent thought, along with his basic fine-motor skills (his hands had begun fumbling over the empty glass), because I clung to the idea that there was a fragment of truth to his reply. I held on to the chance that the alcohol amplified some deep secret locked away, and that he did appreciate me lending in ear, and that maybe I wasn’t just imagining it all, and that maybe the hole I’d dug myself into was worth it. 

 

“Damn, that was uncalled for. All this emotional talk’s got me all soft ‘n shit.”

 

Dean continued to ramble on about his reluctance to be so “touchy,” apologizing several times over for his dumping of problems and reassuring me he wasn’t so emotional all the time, that he had a backbone, that it was the alcohol talking, and maybe I would’ve believed him, had I not done such a great job in understanding his quirks. 

 

Dean’s outlook on the task ahead, the task of meeting his brother once more with his estranged father for the first time in two years, had increased in positivity, at least somewhat. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so open with the worries and his nerves, regardless of whatever sort of mundane poison was running its course through his system. The relief of having let go of those pent up feelings could be seen in every crease of his skin, in every rise and fall of his chest, and in every quick, yet meaningful glance the two of us often caught ourselves in the middle of. It was an accomplishment that I allowed myself to feel pride in. 

 

So I let Dean ramble about whatever else he wanted to talk about. At some point in the night we moved back to the subject of cars, and he told me the long history that him and his prized vehicle had together, and I listened to every word like a test on his speech was coming at the end of the piece. I let his voice leak into my head and got lost in it. As long as Dean was less anxious about the reuniting of his family, I could breathe easy, and I could listen for hours upon hours with the same expression plastered on my face: carefreeness and a mixture of adoration.

 

I didn’t dwell on that last feeling for very long though, in fear of unlocking or realizing something that I intuitively knew I was avoiding. My mind wasn’t ready to face what it had created for itself just yet, it wasn’t prepared to confront the emotions it had strategically placed in the back of its mind. Besides, I wouldn’t have had time to think or obsess about its presence too much, because it was well past two-thirty in the morning when I finally arrived home, eyes blurry with exhaustion and excitement and my heart fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s wing, words and phrases and looks and sentimental value flooding every corner and every square inch of space in my brain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow...this part is a monster both in length and in content. I hope its endlessness did not detract too much from your enjoyment. Thank you for your support thus far, and don't worry, by the end of this story, Dean and Cas will do more than awkwardly converse.


	6. REO Speedwagon, Van Halen, and a Reunion

There was a painfully atrocious looking jukebox in the far left corner of the bar, standing all by its lonesome just between the men and women’s bathrooms, probably crawling with germs from the lavatories’ passerbyers. Apart from its state of cleanliness, however, it had long since passed the deadline for repair. The front surface of it, which I assumed had been painted a flashy purple a good thirty two years prior, was no chipped, faded, and about ready to fall apart. The glass casing covering the song display was clouded with dust, scratches, and had nearly shattered in one section. And, on the normal day, it had to be kicked a few times to play songs clearly and without any obnoxious static interfering with the speakers’ sound. 

Charlie was the only person who could get it to work properly, her kick perhaps possessing just the right amount of accuracy and force, and she often took advantage of her ability by torturing Kevin and I with whatever God-awful song she chose to play. At first and during the beginning of my career at the pub, I’d thought that Charlie Bradbury just enjoyed ear-injuring 80s love songs and refrained from commenting in any way that could insult her “music taste,” but it didn’t take me long to realize that she played them for the sole purpose of aggravating her co-workers into something resembling a fit of rage. I threatened her once that if I had to suffer through another installment of Gloria Estefan, I would lock her in the supplies closet. That was at least a year and a half ago, and I’d heard twenty-three songs resembling Here We Are, and she’d never found herself trapped within the supplies closet.

Anyways, I saw Charlie approach the jukebox on Saturday evening, as the clock was closing in around eight o’ clock, with a gleam in her eyes so devilish, it was as red and fiery as her curled hair. At first her creeping towards the machine was only an object within my peripheral vision, but I was in the middle of hearing the story of how a young man, no older than twenty two, had vomited profusely over the blouse of a new, potential girlfriend earlier that day after she’d taken him out for shrimp, a food he was terribly allergic to. His monologue consisted of utter embarrassment and angry pleas in retrospect of the act, and he asked me what had gotten into him that possessed him to eat the shrimp anyways. I said it was a desire to please. He said being polite and pleasing wasn’t worth the look of horror across the young lady’s features.

It was an exciting story, one that was told so vividly I could smell the sourness of the projectiled, ingested waste in the air around me and began feeling nauseous myself, but Charlie was my distraction. I saw her throw two quarters into the slot with ease and her pointer finger, nails freshly painted a deep magenta, scroll through the song choice, searching for the most agonizing. I was perfectly comfortable with the background noise consisting of just chatters and broken conversation, and it was not a scene that required any Journey accompaniment. Charlie, however, seemed to feel differently.

“REO Speedwagon? Really, Charlie?”

Kevin’s head peeped out from around the corner, face dark and agitated, as the first few, inconspicuous notes of the ballad rang throughout the pub. I couldn’t deny the twinge of annoyance I felt, as well.

“It’s a classic, Kevin, and classic’s live on through the test of time and never get old,” she replied, surprisingly defensive of her song choice. “Besides, I think there’s a few people in our midst that could use a little bit of inspiration in the love department, hm?”

It amazed me how that singular statement was able to soar above the previously described background sounds, bang around the inside of my ears, and cause my head to turn around at a rate that should’ve given me whiplash, just so I could meet Charlie’s smirking gaze head on and feel my defenses waver at the blow. Earlier I’d tried to pretend that maybe she hadn’t seen what had conspired the day before, that maybe she hadn’t noticed the length and depth at which I conversed with who she was convinced was now my “soulmate,” or that maybe she didn’t know how late I’d closed up shop. That look though, the one that I’d run straight into, told me differently.

Ignoring it and shifting my eyes away from hers was the remedy I chose, and while it was hardly successful, at least it allowed me to busy myself with other tasks as the chorus to I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore echoed into the lively pub. I saw a few heads turn in confusion, disgust, even, but knew it wouldn’t dampen the culprit’s spirits. If anything, she would relish in the attention. 

Kevin seemed completely lost as to what Charlie’s explanation had meant, however. He turned to me, then to Charlie, and the back to me, hoping one of us would supply him with the clarifying answer he wanted. I didn’t feel fit nor able to divulge it to him, and it appeared as though Charlie enjoyed the confusion pasted across his already strained face. She simply added to his isolated stress.

“What, didn’t you see  Cas with his new  favorite regular talking it up last night?” She taunted, now entering the bar as Kevin leaned his elbows in on its surface. I would’ve thanked them for at least lowering their voices if I wasn’t on such high alert, determined to not let Charlie get any more punches in and to keep Kevin in the dark as much as possible.

“Wait, that Dean guy?” Kevin inquired, eyes wide. “Leather-jacket dude?”

Charlie shot him a far too enthusiastic wink, causing my stomach to turn over itself as she spoke,

“The one and only.”

“Really? I didn’t think that was your type, Castiel…” the lesser-informed of my tormentors began. I didn’t like the thoughtful consideration in his eyes, like whatever emotions I was experiencing were to be studied under a microscope, and I struggled to understand why the two of them were so dead set on understanding my life and relationships. 

“He’s not,” was my reply. Nothing more.

“Ouch, arrow to the heart on his part!” Charlie exclaimed, hand grazing left side of her chest with a pained crease in her brow. “I hope he never hears you say that.”

“I hope he never hears you two discuss this  topic ,” I said, firmly. “Just because I have a friendly, platonic interest in someone and enjoy their company does not, in turn, imply that I am  romantically interested in them as well. I believe we already went over this, Charlie.”

“You see, that’s where you’re wrong, Castiel!” She contorted, and I ground my teeth together in irritation, knowing I was fighting an uphill battle that I had no chance of winning. This was the fourth episode in an age long war and I couldn’t see the end anywhere near.

“I highly doubt that it’s just a  friendly interest,  as you put it. I mean, I saw you talk to the guy for hours, never taking your eyes off-”

The door rang, my eyes darted upwards, and I cut Charlie off with a wave of my hand. Thankfully, she subsided immediately, probably getting lost in the bridge of the song she’d chosen, but not before I uttered my concluding statements,

“We’ve been through this. You’re not right about this scenario, and I’d really appreciate it if you stopped bringing it up.”

I watched Charlie spin around on her heels after that, the acidity of my words tart on my tongue like the taste of the story the rejected young man had been relaying to me earlier, and the two of us left Kevin back in his original state of confliction and desperation to know more. And I would’ve felt guilty, perhaps gave him some look of sympathy, for I knew he was not the one to blame, but I was already too busy taking a good look at the latest man to approach the bar and take a seat on a stool, its wooden structure creaking under the weight.

The first aspect that I observed of the man’s appearance was his hat, with a navy blue bill and band surrounding its full length, the rest a dirty, faded white. He scratched his thin, reddish grey beard as he sat as well, hands well aged and worn around the edges. Judging from their wear-and-tear and the age lines in his face, his age was circling around the sixty mark.

Shaking off the brief yet irking interaction I’d experienced moments before, I cleared my throat and made my way to the newcomer, planting an attempt at a smile on my face before speaking,

“Good evening, sir, what’ll you have?”

The newcomer looked at me with old eyes, stormy and full of clouds, and didn’t appear at all friendly. His gaze was harsh and analytical, even somewhat cynical, and in any other setting I would’ve deemed him unapproachable, but my job did not allow for such conclusions. After what felt like a couple very long, agonizing moments spent waiting for his reply, he answered in a gruff, burly voice,

“Double scotch, ‘n no ice.”

Immediately my interest in the old man multiplied exponentially. I highly doubted that many people order such a blunt, simple drink and be able to down it, certainly not like Dean could, who the drink had become my natural instinct to give to, and I couldn’t help but wonder. Did the physical appearance of this man match anyone Dean had mentioned in the past? As I poured his drink, I searched high and low throughout each file in my brain, desperate to find the description I was sure the only other “double scotch and no ice” drinker had supplied me with.

Though even once the shining glass had been handed to the newcomer, my memory could barely even scrounge up names to relate the man to, let alone appearance traits. The only people Dean had mentioned were Sam Winchester, and there wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that the person sitting in front of me was not Dean’s younger brother, his father, a friend of his named Bobby Singer, though my recollection was faded and broken in regards to that name, since not much information had been relayed to me about his identity, and his father, John Winchester.

He couldn’t possibly be his father, could he? I tried to find similarities in their facial features like a computer running codes through its system. Dean’s nose was long, protruding at the end though relatively flat at its bridge, while this man’s was large and stout. Dean’s eyes were almond shaped, lively, while the comparison’s were squinted and thin, perhaps with age. The more I looked the less I found similar. But, goodness, were their mannerisms similar-

“I’m just gonna cut right to it. Are you Cas? Er, Castiel?”

After giving this stranger such a confused, mind-blown look, whatever answer I supplied him went off as unnecessary, but I was still in total and utter shock. He had to know Dean. There was no way he could’ve known my name otherwise, since I’d never seen his face before in the pub or even outside on the street. But just who was he?

“Y-yes, I am,” I stammered, struggling to find and maintain my composure.

“Ah, your face looks the way it should then.”

Without so much as another look of acknowledgment or explanation, he took a long sip of his drink with a satisfied look on his face, his beard creasing where his mouth was smiling. It made my skin crawl with the pain of not knowing and confusion, and with each contraction of his throat and gulp of alcohol I felt my grip on my tongue slip. 

“Not to be rude, or anything,” I began, knowing I was slipping but didn’t have the mental capacity to care. “But how do you know my name? Or what I look like?”

This man swallowed deeply, eyes closed in thought and the knowledge that he was in possession of the conversation, and had me waiting on the tips of my toes as he responded, though it did little to calm my nerves.

“Well, I know a fellow by the name of Dean Winchester, ya see…”

I truly did not expect to be right in my hypothesis, and was nearly floored when this stranger confirmed it. He was in some kind of relation to Dean! I struggled to maintain my composure and outward appearance of being sane as he continued.

“He told me this pub was definitely the place to be, that there was some top-notch service, and to look for a guy by the name of er...well, Castiel,” this man said, eyes sparkling with accomplishment and his mouth arched upward into a smirk. “Guess that wasn’t too hard.”

I smiled and nodded my head, as politely and calmly as I possibly could, without letting this newcomer know how mind-boggled I was that he’d been able to pick me out in the bustling crowd, and that none other than Dean Winchester had suggested he’d come. It proved to be a task of the utmost difficulty, however, judging by the way my stomach was turning over itself and I fought the urge my hands had to shake and quiver, mind racing in an attempt to come up with a theory explaining why this man was seated in front of me, and why Dean had instructed him to do so. 

“I guess I should introduce ma’self then, hm?” this man announced, cutting a slice through my thoughts and causing me to blink rapidly, transferring back into reality. 

This man, after catching my full attention once more, removed the hat from atop his head before speaking, an odd display of formality for someone who seemed to lack all traces or concept of it, and said with a broad grin on his face,

“I’m Bobby Singer...old friend ‘a Dean’s.”

It  was Bobby!

My mouth nearly dropped open at the shock-factor of it all, if I hadn’t locked my jaw seconds before it released itself, and potential words were flying within my head and I frantically looked for the polite response, the usual, expected reply of courtesy, and eventually settled on a load of halfway-there stammers.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Singer...Dean has mentioned you before.”

Bobby let out a dry sort of laugh, one that I assumed was at my expense, and I didn’t even bother imagining what shade of pink my cheeks had turned.

“No need for formalities, boy. Just call me Bobby, e’ryone does, anyways.”

I nodded my head with a desperate sort of smile on my face. Just by reminding me to call him Bobby, nothing more, had made the remembrance of such a detail at least seven times more dire and stressful, but I decided to refrain from telling him and continued nodding until he spoke once more.

“Dean sure as hell has mentioned you before. Described you right down to the damn shade of your eyes, for cryin’ out loud. Didn’t make it very hard to pick you out of the crowd, that’s for sure.”

Hopefully this Bobby Singer character wasn’t as intuitively observant as Dean was, or else he would’ve made note of the poorly concealed ear to ear smile that had spread across my lips and into my cheeks, a look purely of blissful validation. Dean had paid attention to me, acute attention, for that matter, to the point where the color of my eyes stood out to him. It left me wondering what other details he’d absorbed during our times together, and just how he’d fitted them together when describing me to a man who was otherwise a complete stranger. The flattery was nearly too much to handle, but nothing compared to the feeling of worth it sprouted within me.

I would have to re-evaluate my measure of worth to Dean Winchester.

“You’re friends with Dean then?” I inquired, letting the remnants of my joyous expression remain. There wasn’t much use in fighting or denying its existence.

“For years now. I know their father and I look out for those boys when he’s...having issues,” Bobby explained. “Haven’t seen Sam in a while though, but I’m sure Dean told ya that.”

I nodded my head again, recalling the sentences in which Sam Winchester was explained to me for at least the seventh time since I’d first heard them. 

“Yes, in great detail.”

A bittersweet glow came over Bobby’s front, and I couldn’t help but assume that the longing for Sam’s return was mutual amongst the Winchester family and company. He looked to me like a person who didn’t understand the worth he had in other people’s eyes, and his absence stung like a fresh wound. Constantly.

“Well, consider yourself lucky, Castiel,” Bobby explained after taking a rather sharp inhale of breath, possibly a method to recollect his thoughts and composure. “Dean’s not really the type to talk about his personal life.”

 

I agreed, but not without chortling at my pre-existing knowledge of this trait of his. 

“I’m very aware.”

Bobby took a light sip of his drink, and I noted the difference in Dean and his drinking patterns, before replying with a statement that nearly floored me,

“But...that’s kinda why I’m here,” he began. Slowly his head turned, his dusty eyes raising from their spot on the bar’s surface, and locking directly onto my own. 

“Besides Dean’s weird-as-hell memory of you, he also told me you were a damn good listener, a great bartender. Told me you know about Sam’s out of the blue trip to visit him and his dad this weekend.”

I would’ve spent more time obsessing over the fact that Dean had relayed to another soul that he thought I was a good listener, that he even appreciated our conversations, if the tail end of Bobby’s piece hadn’t intrigued me so much. Besides the fact that the previous night and most of that morning and afternoon had been spent wondering how Dean’s time with his lost brother was going, it sounded as though Bobby was eluding to the explanation if his being there, and I had to know what their intentions were. The need was evident in the curling of my fingers around the edge of the bar.

“Yes, he did tell me about his brother’s visit,” I answered. “He seemed a little nervous about it, as well.”

Bobby agreed wholeheartedly, since he nodded his head rather enthusiastically in reply.

“Ha, we all were. It’s not everyday someone comes home to their estranged family…”

Bobby shook his head violently immediately after his answer, and seemed to get back on the track of conversation he’d laid out for himself, and I didn’t bother questioning it.

“Anyways, Dean told me to check out this bar for the service, of course, but also to ‘tell the bartender Castiel something.’”

He paused, and I nearly collapsed atop the bar in suspense.

“He just wanted me to tell you that today went well, better than expected, and that him and Sam are getting along good. And thanks, I guess, for whatever happened yesterday. It meant a lot to him.”

“Geez man, I’m sorry…”

“Here I am again, unloading all my problems on you again. You don’t need to hear this stuff.”

 

“I think you’re the only person.”

The words that Dean had told me, just after explaining to me not only his relationship with his brother, but his fear in his arrival, and even the troubles he’d gone through for years regarding his father, had meant something. They’d been true, not just fueled by the chemical traveling down his gullet. He’d been sincere, truthful, and I’d been able to help him through his fear. 

And the relief I felt was almost enough to cause my knees to buckle. I was ridiculously glad things had worked out between Sam and Dean. The thoughts and possible scenarios I’d mapped out in my head the night before, after arriving so late from the pub, had kept me in a sleep-deprived state of bloodshot eyes and a pounding head for longer than I cared to admit. The way Dean had described their bond and the possibility of their reuniting going smoothly had allowed for little hope of positivity, but at that moment I was wrapped in mindless bliss and excitement for Dean. I couldn’t think of a soul who deserved it more than he.

Somehow, however, I manage to consolidate all of those feelings into one brief sentence.

“Oh...well, that’s a great relief to hear...I’m glad.”

Bobby grinned at my answer, shaking his drink in circles, causing the glass’s contents to move like a small whirlpool, as he chose his words. In that short window of time, however, I’d managed to become infatuated with the fact that Dean had gone through all the trouble of sending his dear friend Bobby Singer all the way out to the pub, describing my outward appearance to him, and making sure he told me of the success him and his brother had in their time together. And it began to make sense to me: the notion that, maybe, I did mean a little bit of something to Dean.

“Hah, sure is. I was worried about it too,” Bobby said, truthfully. “But we’re not over the hill just yet.”

That sparked my interest, but not the overwhelmingly optimistic kind.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“I’m meeting the boys at their dad’s house tomorrow...and that’s sure to be exciting. Not the good kind, either.”

“You don’t think it’ll go over well with Sam and his father?” I continued, prompting him to speak more. I knew the answer, knew it by the way it was burning into the back of my head, but I would deny it until it was confirmed. I didn’t want the successfulness of Dean and Sam’s get-together to be overshadowed by what Dean described to me as a horrible, terrifying father.

“I’m afraid that one of them’ll start throwin’ punches, to be quite honest with ya,” Bobby replied, and in an instant that burning sensation turned to chills that spread throughout my body. 

 

“How...how definite of an outcome is that?” I pressed, ignoring Bobby’s puzzled expression at my choice of words. I couldn’t be bothered with my awkwardness then, however.

“It’s a guarantee. Sam and John Winchester are basically sworn enemies at this point. Hell, it doesn’t even phase most of us anymore. But, well…”

I stepped in.

“Dean doesn’t handle the conflict well, I’m guessing.”

Bobby dipped his head once, and my chest fell with one silent heave.

“Bingo,” was his choice of reply. “Dean’s always been the one to try and resolve the...uh... tension between them but it doesn’t work out all that well very often. They’re just too different, Sam and their father. Hell, I can’t really blame Sam. He seems like the only one of the two who thinks John Winchester isn’t some kinda fuckin’ saint after what he put those boys through…”

He had me at the edge of my seat with his words. They were so entrancing that I nearly forgot that we were talking about a very real person here, and that whatever foreboding deed the Winchester’s father had committed had directly affected the boys, and perhaps much of Dean’s self-destructive behavior branched from their childhood. Bobby must’ve noticed the fiery interest in my eyes though and turned away, as if he’d said too much.

“What happened between Sam and Dean and their father, Mr. Singer?” I implored, but then realized the mistake I’d made in identifying him, and corrected myself. “Er, I mean...Bobby.”

I could tell, the moment the revised words past my lips and touched Bobby Singer’s ears, that I was treading on uneasy ground. Immediately I considered retracting my statement, trading it in for more casual talk, or an attempt to get to know someone of such close relation to the Winchester I was most interested in, but Bobby beat me to the punch and replied, gravely.

“Ah...a lot of things, really,” he began, breath heavy and eyes hanging low. “Dean didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head no, sadness in my eyes. “No, he only eluded to it. I don’t know any specifics. Please, if you think it’d be unwise to tell me, feel free to change the subject. I was only curious, perhaps a little rude…”

“No, no, it’s fine. Knowing Dean, the only way to find anything out about that son-of-a-bitch is to hear it secondhand...he’s not the most readable of types. I’m sure you know that though. Judging by the way he’s been talking about you, you seem to have him figured out more than even his own damn brother does!”

There was an inexplicable glint in Bobby’s eyes as he concluded his sentence, one that I immediately chalked up as having much more worth than any of the others he’d spoken that night. Whatever could he mean, “judging by the way he’s been talking about you?” What had Dean Winchester, of all people, been saying about the lowlife, odd bartender who was so intrusively barging in on his personal business? His methods to his madness had officially and completely surpassed my understanding, and apparently my confusion was evident across my face, because Bobby snickered. 

“He hasn’t said anything  bad , if that’s what you’re gettin’ at,” he assured me, a light twang of good-hearted humor in his voice. “Shit, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say…”

And he stopped, like he was dangling some precious prize, something of immense value, over a steep cliff, and just as I was about to snatch it out of his grasp, he let it slip through his fingers and into the abyss. I was at such a loss for words that I couldn’t even bring myself to ask questions about his curious, torturously intriguing statement, and even before I could come to my senses again, he was off and about answering my previous question. It was exhausting talking to Bobby Singer, and even more exhausting when he seemed to know something of vital importance about Dean Winchester that I had yet to file away in my brain.

“You see, there was a time where John Winchester was a good man, a normal man. I met him about thirty years ago, a few years before Dean was born, him bein’ the oldest, and he was happy back then. Laughed a lot, drank, but never too much, and was so excited when he found out him and his wife, Mary, were havin’ a kid. You’d think they’d been touched by a damn angel when they got the news.”

Mary Winchester. The name did not strike any chords with me. Dean had refrained from mentioning his mother, though I couldn’t imagine why.

“And when Dean was five, they had another kid, and that’s where Sammy came along. Even when Sam could barely gurgle his kinda words, you could tell that the two of ‘em were polar opposites,” Bobby continued, fondness in his murky eyes. “The Winchesters were just about the happiest family I ever knew for about six years, until it all went to hell.”

“What happened?” I asked, noticing how my tone had dropped to a volume just barely above a whisper. “What changed?”

Before speaking, Bobby took a long swig of his drink, leaving just a few remains to soak around in the bottom of his glass. He shuddered upon swallowing, preparing himself for whatever load of grave, depressing news I was sure was coming my way, and I thought I should do the same. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of using alcohol like the storyteller did. 

“It was the night of Sam’s first birthday, I think...yeah, that’s right...I was supposed to come in the following day for a party, to see the family, the works. I’m not totally sure how it happened, the details are still fuzzy ‘n all, but…”

The pause was eating me alive, all in the few half-seconds it took for him to continue speaking. I knew that whatever was relayed to me would forever change my view of not only John Winchester, but of Dean as well. 

Bobby’s continued speech startled me back into attentiveness. 

“There was a fire. In Sam’s room. That’s where I think it started.”

“Mary went to get Sam, probably smelled smoke...I don’t know. John was able to come and help, getting Sammy outta there, obviously, but...Mary didn’t…”

It felt as though someone had propped open the front door, letting all the cold drafts inside along with the freezing rain and almost snow, to chill my skin and knock my senses into next week. I believe that Bobby kept speaking after his initial bomb-dropping of news, but I needed to hear no more. I understood, more than I ever thought there would be to understand, and it left me floored. And a whole lot of the missing pieces that I’d gathered about my new favorite regular began coming together, making sense, in a way more morbid than I could’ve imagined.

“Mary Winchester didn’t make it. She burned alive in Sammy’s room, and her body was never recovered,” Bobby concluded, now unable to meet my eyes without wincing. “Naturally, such an incident would traumatize any family, especially the kids, but John sorta lost it. I think he blamed himself for not being able to save her, really.”

My heart was heaving with grief over a woman that I’d never known and a family that I’d only met one member of. I couldn’t imagine the horror Sam Winchester must’ve gone through daily over the fact that his mother had died in his very room, the loss John was faced with after losing the love of his life, and Dean, who was left to pick up the pieces. The ignored one. The one that was taken for granted. The one that was overlooked. 

“But John took it as a chance to check out, go his own way...his own psychotic way, for that matter…” Bobby added the last bit under his breath. “He lost it, lost himself, drowned all traces of his damn conscience in alcohol. And, ya know, maybe I’d have been more willin’ to help him, if he hadn’t let those two boys go in the process.”

“Sam lived with nightmares about his mom, lived with guilt, even spells of depression. Not that it held him back much of course. He’s the most successful Winchester in the whole damn family…”

He was refraining from speaking about Dean, the Winchester I was most acutely interested in. The resignation, the desire to stall, was written all over his wrinkled, creased, yet overwhelmingly truthful face. If only Dean had been so transparent. 

“What about Dean?” I mumbled, feeling unsure if I had the right to walk on such territory. “How did it affect him?”

“While Sam got the yells and the ‘you’re just gonna leave your family, your own flesh ‘n blood, and go off to some BS law school?’ talks, Dean got the end of things. Too much was put on that boy’s shoulders,” Bobby explained, and took a hearty sip of his draught of eventual death before continuing.

“I’ve walked in on plenty of John’s episodes: throwing beer bottles at Dean, shaking him, slapping him upside the head, telling him his priority was Sam, nothing else. If anything happened to Sammy on Dean’s watch, he got served once they got home. But he never worried. He never cared. To this day he’s denied he has any issues, denied all that anxiety ‘n self-hatred he’s got floatin’ up in that sad, broken little skull ‘a  his.”

Bobby sighed dreadfully, like each syllable pained him to speak of, like each depiction of John Winchester’s abuse sent chills up and down his spine. Since I just so happened to be reacting that very way, however, it wasn’t something that I found I could doubt.

“He doesn’t know anythin’ else, doesn’t know what it’s like to have a real father. Now he’s got himself a grade-A drinkin’ problem, can go for days without stepping outside the house, and he still flocks to his dad. I worry about that boy constantly; if something else happens or he gets it in his head that he’s useless, I don’t know what-”

“Why would Dean think he’s useless?” I interrupted, temporarily throwing common courtesy out the window. The circumstances were very, very special, after all.

And Bobby, in turn, looked up at me with the saddest of all gleams in his oddly dull yet curious eyes, eyes that looked as if they’d seen more than one-hundred-thousand days, and his face fell. It fell into sadness, heartbrokenness, despair over his inability to help someone who he loved more than anything in the world.

“He wasn’t able to follow his dad’s orders, right? He couldn’t keep Sam home, couldn’t keep him from leaving.”

\--“I tried to level with him, explain to him how god-damn impossible it is to get into a lawyer-and-doctor mine field like that, but he still wanted to try. Hell, he clung to the idea of gettin’ in there and moving away.”--

\-- “I think it just ‘cuz I didn’t want to be left alone at home after so many years.”--

\--“I’m proud of him though, really. He and my dad were always fighting, bitchin’ to one another about something someone said, or did, or didn’t do...the whole nine yards. I guess it was good for him to get away from an environment like that.”--

Dean had meant those words that he’d said to me so many days ago, when I’d gotten the first peek into the man that was Sam Winchester. Now I knew where the reluctance to let him leave had come from: their father. I couldn’t imagine the turmoil he must’ve found himself in the middle of. He’d been faced with an impossible choice...obeying his terrifying, controlling, yet crumbling farther or let the best friend he’d ever had walk out the door and leave him with that very parental figure they’d both suffered through. It wasn’t fair to put such a choice on his shoulders, not when he’d had Sam attached to them for so many years, not when he’d had to be constantly on the lookout for his father. 

“That’s terrible,” I murmured, unable to think of anything intelligent or worthwhile to say. Bobby didn’t seem to mind, however, and busied himself by finishing off the last of his drink and slamming the emptied glass down onto the bar. After taking but a few moments to examine his reaction to such a tale, I doubted that it was one he told often. I wasn’t sure whether to feel lucky or cursed. 

“You’re tellin’ me. I’ve watched that man destroy his boys and think nothin’ of it. I’m sure you could tell that there was somethin’ off about Dean, though.”

I nodded, rather solemnly, and said,

“Yes, I was able to gather as much. He told me bits and pieces of what his home life was like, so I had an idea.”

Bobby looked utterly surprised to be told this.

“What, he did? Wow, he doesn’t really talk about it all that much…” he muttered, mostly to himself. “Guess it makes sense though. He does think pretty highly of you,  Cas. ”

I was flattered, really, but much too distracted with the feeling of lightheadedness that his statement had caused to convey as much. What in the world could he mean by saying such things? What in the world had given Dean a reason to think of me so highly? The answer was eluding me so fiercely that my head was throbbing with the strain of its weight and resistance, though when I did snap out of it, I remembered my job as a bartender and asked Bobby Singer the question upon which my entire career rides on.

“Oh...I’m sorry. Would you like another drink?”

My customer examined his glass thoughtfully for a good, long minute, debating whether to succumb to the soothing taste the liquid I kept behind the bar could supply, and I wondered if he possessed the same lack of self control that Dean seemed to. He proved me wrong in no time at all, however, by stating the following,

“Nah, I think I’m good. Just came in to check up on ya, that’s all. My work here is done.”

I watched him as he took out a wad of green cash and laid it onto the surface standing between us. I knew it far surpassed the amount that he owed, but before I could refuse such a plentiful amount, Bobby had already made his way over to the confound jukebox that I’d managed to push from my memory for the entirety of that night so far, and was placing a few jangling coins into the slot.

And in no time at all, “Oh Sherrie” was blasting through the pub, the pitchy vocals of the eighties stinging my ears in a way that I thought only Charlie’s music choices could do, and Bobby Singer was approaching the door to leave. Panicked, with the money still sitting pretty just under my nose, I called out to him,

“Mr. Singer!...er, Bobby, you don’t owe nearly this much, your total only comes out to be-”

“Keep the change, Cas!” was his reply, and I heard the clang of the pub’s door resonate deep within my ears. 

The similarity between both Dean and Bobby was uncanny, and probably far surpassed any similarities Dean and his father shared, if my analysis proved correct. 

After I’d recovered from my shock at having met someone else in relation to Dean, after my surprise and apparent horror over what I’d learned about his unfortunate child had subsided, if only for the time being, I allowed myself to feel the gratitude and worth that came with Dean sending one of his friends out to simply let me know that he was okay, that the issue we’d spent so much time discussing had gone smoothly. Apart from my immense relief at the news, I couldn’t stop wondering what Bobby’s off-hand comments about “what I meant to Dean” had, well, meant. In my eyes, I’d been nothing but a passerby, someone to vent to, someone who understood his experiences not firsthand, but through years of having similar stories told to me.

Though it was safe to start assuming that maybe, just maybe, there was more to the story now. Maybe Bobby was right, maybe his snide whispers had meant something true. I hoped that imploring one of Dean’s closest friends to divulge me in his life story didn’t betray or harm whatever worth I accumulated in my Thursday night regular’s eyes, but I chose to look at the knowledge as something purely beneficial. Now I could handle Dean even more efficiently, I could understand him even further, analyze him even further. There was a world of possibilities at my disposal now, and I owed them all to that kind, odd, yet particularly vulgar man Dean had sent as his messenger.

Each asset Bobby Singer had provided me with would be used to understand this worth that I somehow had to Dean. I had to understand what it was, but why was I getting the feeling that there was something blatantly obvious about, staring me right in the face?

I didn’t know. All I did know was that I had an updated mission to carry out, “Oh Sherrie” was quickly becoming one of my least favorite songs, and Charlie’s singing did not help me suffer through its final chorus.

DEAN

It was remarkable, really, how little the years had changed things. During the entire ride there, while my anxious fingers had been drumming on the steering wheel, hollow-tapping with the radio buzzing in and out of clarity in the background, I’d hoped the years would alter the usual course of things. I’d thought that maybe, if whatever all-powerful being overhead that tended to skip over me, would make an exception, just for that evening, and that things could play out differently. All I asked for was peace, and not even the pure kind, just the somewhat awkward, surface-level quiet that would get us through the remainder of the day. I’d prayed in a way that I never had before that things would be bearable, calm, easy.

But whoever had the nerve to say that time heals no wounds was painfully and entirely right.

I had arrived at my dad’s house at four o’clock that evening, with Sam looking as though he’d been pasted into my ride’s passenger seat, and it had been warping and twisting and simply blowing my mind since he’d arrived in the afternoon before how  nice it was to have him back. It wasn’t the run-of-the-mill reunion, where I was happy to hear my sibling’s voice for a total of three minutes, and then I was prepared to go another two years full of distance and half-assed communication attempts; it was something a hell of a lot deeper than that.

Being in the same remote proximity as Sam, breathing the same stagnant car air as Sam, laughing at the same jokes as Sam, and even listening to the same Van Halen album I’d had in the tapedeck for nearly three weeks now with my little brother created one of the best experiences I could recall in my sober memory. The world, in all its spinning and craziness, fell still for the time being, as if its usual rounds of chaos were slowed to promote the best kind of get-together possible, and I couldn’t express with words how relieved I was. I suppose the two of us settled on yelling the words to “Hot for the Teacher” at the tops of our lungs, and I was proud to see Sam knew all the words fifteen years later after being subject to it as a kid. Some things just didn’t leave your memory.

That fact, I suppose, could serve as a valid explanation for the events that took place later on that day. Even while I called through the chorus, marveling at Sam’s gruesomely pitchy tone as it danced across each syllable with shaky legs but a confident smile of bliss to back it up, the fear was burning a hole through my good mood, slowly but surely. I knew that there couldn’t be a good outcome at the end of the road there, it didn’t align with how my entire childhood with Sam had played out until that point and, judging by the way my life tended to go, there was no chance in hell that it would be changing soon. And that thought sent shivers up and down my spine and caused my teeth to grind together in stress and the inevitability of an old-fashioned Winchester screaming match.

“Dean, you alright?”

I think I literally jumped within my seat, nearly smacking the top of my head against my car’s ceiling, at the sound of my brother’s concerned voice. I watched him turn down the radio’s volume and shoot me a look of pure worry and brotherly, well, love, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that such expressions only made my internal turmoil worse. I didn’t have it in me.

“W-what?” I stammered anxiously, quickly searching for the right words to sew together. “Yeah, yeah I’m alright. Just thinkin’ about today, that’s all.”

“What, are you nervous about it?” he inquired, inching himself closer in a way that I couldn’t help but remember from ten years ago. I’d driven him to a school dance where the ever-elusive, tantalizing Ruby had been, and his eyes had grown in the same manner and depth then as they had when I told him that the key to school dances was to get the girl on her own, then make your move. I was almost too busy recalling the fact that I’d never been to a school dance in my life and grinning to answer his question.

“Eh, well, a little, I guess…” I admitted, shrugging my shoulders. “But hey, no offense, but you’re the kid he’s pissed at right now, not me. You should be more worried.”

Sam shook his head, an exasperated smile painting itself across his angular, tan features. I’d been told before that he was the better looking of us both.

“Dean, don’t BS me. I know Dad’s hard on you too...we’re both pretty screwed, if you ask me.”

It sure as hell was odd, hearing him say it aloud. No matter the truth to the response, however, I lived by the rule “deny, deny, deny” until you can’t possibly deny any more and I hadn’t quite reached rock bottom yet.

“Heh, we’ll see about that, law-school preppie,” I snarled under my breath, but not without sending Sam a glittering smirk of annoying older-brother-ness and pride over my first grade insult. It did the job though, and soon Sam had rolled his bright eyes, reclined back in his chair, and I replayed the song that I’d gotten in so much trouble for teaching to Sam. It felt worth it though, as we drove together, voices in sync, to what I considered our impossible and deathly fate, and I was as prepared as I possibly could be in my mind. It would be okay. I’d get through it with only a few minor scrapes and bruises.

But that was long before we’d arrived. Upon pulling into the driveway of my dad’s latest dwelling, a green-sided ranch with rotted window trim and a bush twice the height of myself in front of the bay window, the sinking feeling I’d attempted to fill with Van Halen was excruciatingly present, and my fingers were dancing along the rim of the steering wheel out of nervous habit, rather than pass-time. It was embarrassing to see my younger brother, the one who I’d thought had more of a reason to be scared for that evening, exit the vehicle with a strange amount of carefree swagger. I knew if I tried to emulate a front anywhere close to the one he’d accomplished, it would end in awkward trips and failed attempts at looking relaxed. 

As I arose from the driver’s seat, I saw the light of a lamp flash in the monstrously sized bay window, its light rays seeping through the leaves and branches of the outside bush, but it let me know nonetheless that our dad was very much there. It was only the image of Sam’s legs pushing him forward, without fault, that kept me from camping out in the car, replaying the same song over and over again, until whatever Sam wanted to be accomplished had been done. But I followed him, closely, and all the while was positively terrified.

Bobby wasn’t there yet, as he’d promised, and while his absence was very much apparent at my side, I was too distracted with the image of Sam approaching my father’s front door and raising his clenched fist, ever so slowly, to knock. And with each strike on the wooden surface, I flinched and chewed my lip and stuffed my own clenched fists into the pockets of my blue jeans. I knew for a fact that if my father caught wind of my nervous nature and trembling hands that I’d be ridiculed for the day for being a wimp, for being a pussy.

There was a sudden unhinging noise, like metal on metal, and I caught Sam’s curious eyes with a look of anxiousness in my own. If he noticed, he chose to do me a favor and ignore it.

“Looks like he installed even more locks, hm?” He suggested humorously, though the observation was entirely true. I counted six locks unhinging and undoing themselves and unlocking, with each noise came the familiar scent of paternal paranoia and mild, barely there insanity, and swallowed hard once the noises ceased. The pause in which my dad seemed to take in opening the door was agonizing, just long enough for my eyes to flick back to my brother, who was hopelessly unaware of my panic, and question his every motive. What the hell did he mean by coming back? What was his overwhelming goal? And, most importantly, why was I such an imperative piece of it?

In the middle of my crashing and burning thoughts there appeared a beacon of clarity and reality: a pull of wind inward, the source of the gust coming from the now opened front door. It snapped me into the current situation that I couldn’t possibly understand the point of, but neither of the two people in my presence seemed to give a damn about my point there or my mental wellbeing. 

“Sam...and...Dean?”

You’d think it was his first few words, the way his lips barely parted and both Sam and I had to crane our hearing to make out what had been spoken. But my dad had spoke, alright, in a way more quiet and more foreign to him than any accent on this planet could be: in a whisper. A dumbfounded, amazed, at-a-loss-for-words whisper. The expression it painted across his darkened, sunken in features was all but familiar to me, the way his eyes were quiet and sad and sparkling with a substance I wouldn’t admit to myself was moisture, and the way he was gazing fondly at the son he was supposed to despise nearly had me fooled that he’d changed.

About ninety-nine percent of me was fooled by just those seconds of firsthand interaction with him. All previous premonitions about John Winchester, the things I’d proven to be true about my father over the twenty years I’d been glued to his side, were millimeters away from fluttering out of my reach and into the air, and I didn’t dare grab them. I let them trickle away, trickle into my bad memories, my nightmares, but something in my line of vision kept the truth about my dad anchored to the ground:

the bottle of whiskey clutched tightly in the hand he tried to keep hidden from us.

Compared to me, Sam didn’t seem as perceptive then.

“Heh...in the flesh,” I heard Sam mumble, unsure of what the proper phrasing of his appearance should be, and on any other day I imagine I would’ve elbowed him in the ribs, cleared my throat, at least rolled my eyes, and corrected him in the apparently “charismatic way” I had about doing things, but there was far too much to focus on then. Far too much to perceive. Whether it be perceiving the days’ old stubble dotting the outskirts of my father’s lips, the ominous brown stain on the front of his shirt, the bags under his eyes, his eyes’ lack of focus, there was much to be observed and taken into account. If Sam wasn’t going to do it, it was up to me, as well as it was up to me to keep my mouth shut about said perceived details.

No amount of perception, however, could’ve prepared me for the actions that transpired within the next few seconds, however. All I could do was watch with a mouth, which was falling increasingly more agape, might I add, as both my brother and my dad’s arms rose upwards and forwards, until they were awkwardly wrapped around each other’s bulky shoulders with a stiff grip, but a grip of father-son love all the same. Judging by my expression, one might’ve thought I’d been witnessing a damn birth or something.

“It’s...it’s nice to see you, Sam,” I heard my dad mutter into the thin fabric of Sam’s tee shirt, the one I’d bought him after I’d snuck us out to go see Journey together. I’d bought it monstrously big for him on purpose, and the purpose was shining in front of me right then, embracing my dad.

“Nice to see you too, Dad,” was Sam’s choice response. Plain and simple, yet shockingly effective. Finally my dad’s arms bent at the joints and his finger grabbed loads of the shirt’s fabric between them, pulling Sam closer, and I couldn’t help but marvel at Sam’s eager reciprocation of the act and the whiskey bottle now sitting on the front porch, looking odd and out of place with the outline of my dad’s handprint dabbled in sweat on its front.

I did cease observing when my name appeared within the oddly sentimental exchange, or, rather, once it had come to pass. My dad sent me a warm, small smile upon releasing Sam from his death grip, and I felt it heat up my insides and the skin just below my eyes. 

“Dean, geez, kept your old man waitin’ long enough, hm?” He exclaimed in a voice more suiting to him, booming and loud and insensitively humorous. I shrugged my shoulders, grinning in reply, as he exchanged the handshake I’d gotten trapped in for a hug, pulling me in by the wrist and wrapping those same arms around my front. He smelled like a cedar chest, alcohol, and spices, the kind that burned my nose. 

“I was so busy waiting for this college boy to stop by, couldn’t make time to see you!” I replied with a laugh that quickly faded upon me realizing what I’d said, and in no time at all I’d busied myself with hiding my face and watching the other two converse, not wanting to screw it up anymore. Sam, despite the strangely open-armed welcome, was still walking on dangerous ice. He had to be. 

“Well, damn, it’s gettin’ cold out here,” Dad announced upon landing in a lull in the conversation. “Come on inside, guys, you haven’t seen this place yet…”

That was a lie; I’d helped Dad move in three months ago. I’d driven the damn moving truck a good sixty miles from the old place while he wailed about his paranoia and the chance of tornadoes where he was living now, despite the fact that he was still within the same state. I’d even gotten the honor of lining up portraits of Mom in the secluded section of the living room, the dingiest, darkest part really, that he’d set aside as some sort of shrine for her. It was something of a John Winchester tradition and, creepy as it may be, I’d felt pretty special.

“Dean, grab that bottle on the porch, will ya?”

My hands fell directly into the sweat spots on my dad’s liquor bottle, as seamlessly as I followed his commands and followed my brother and him inside. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really do apologize for the later update. My day was full of AP homework, procrastination, and my typical forgetfulness. I hope the minor twist at the end made it worth your while, though! Also, as always, thank you all for the kind words and the support. Hopefully I haven't disappointed anyone yet. 
> 
> Also, did I write Dean okay?


	7. The Attempted Alleviation of Guilt...Among Other Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a monster in length and I am very very sorry.

DEAN

The same, fiery smell continued on inward and I marveled at Sam’s lack of wincing. Maybe he’d expected as much though. Maybe he’d been perceptive enough, after all. It had taken me a good forty-five minutes to get fully accustomed to it, and by that time Bobby had arrived and prompted my dad to start his version of a house tour all over again, from start to finish. I didn’t see much point in being shown a house that I’d helped put together just weeks ago, but my father didn’t feel the same way. He didn’t remember the same way I did.

 

It was a relief when Bobby arrived though, because at least he had the balls to admit to himself, me, and even Sam if he’d ever been willing to listen, that things weren’t better. The entire house smelled of old habits never shaken, only amplified, and my dad was jumpy. He would perk up at the mention of certain words, certain phrases, certain subjects, and nearly shut down in intervals of slurs and offers of drinks to which we all did our best to deny. Sam was the first to give in, followed by Bobby, and then me, which I found almost humorously ironic. The one who was most like their father in their drinking habits had avoided taking alcohol from that very same father figure the most. 

 

I suppose it took one to know one, but I kept such a sad thought to myself as I sipped my scotch. There were two intrusive ice cubes floating about the amber liquid, and I sighed. 

 

“Cas woulda known better,” was my instinctive thought before downing a large sip. And, oddly enough, it would be nice to have his support there. He always laid things out on the table as they were, with no bullshit, but had a nice, delicate way of doing so, a way that made the hefty pills we all tried our best to avoid easier to swallow. There was so much tension in the air, so much that I could see sparks dance across everyone’s quickly shared gazes with one another, and I knew his awkward humor and overwhelming politeness would take a least a fraction of it away.

 

“Oh, Dean, I went to that bar ya told me about,” Bobby suddenly chimed in, as though my mind were a telescope, free to look into, and after recovering from the statement’s irony, I could help but smile at the thought of it.

 

“Oh, ha, that’s good,” I murmured, unsure of how to phrase my answer without sounding weird to both Sam and my father. They weren’t aware of the situation at all, they had no clue who Castiel was, and while I’d intended to keep Bobby’s nose out of it as well, I should’ve known that such a feat was next to impossible. He had a knack for reading me straight through, like a book from cover, and the only person I could think of who matched this ability was, well, the very same person I’d failed in concealing.

 

“Talked to that Cas guy, too. Weird fella,” he answered, itching the front of his head underneath the bill of his hat, along his hairline. “Seemed mighty excited to know I knew who you were.”

 

I denied the presence of a red hue streaking across the skin beneath my eyes. 

 

“Heh, really? Well I see him every time I got to that pub, gettin’ to know him pretty well I guess,” is what I replied with, a flimsy answer to say after a sentence of such implied, unspoken worth had been thrown into the already heated atmosphere. I wished Bobby would get the hint that perhaps my dad’s house was not the most opportune of locations to talk about whoever Castiel Novak was, or whatever it was that I meant to him, but if there’s one thing above all others that my dad could sense, it was hostility. He would catch the look I fighted sending Bobby before I could even blink the expression onto my face.

 

“Huh? Who’s this Cas?” Sam interjected, humor and the knowledge that he was being hopelessly inconvenient and annoying evident in his voice. And upon second thought, maybe my younger brother knew more than I’d expected and hoped.

 

“A guy I met at the bar…”I stated, quite matter-of-factly, and then instantly played my sentence back in my head and grimaced. My dad, not understanding nor attempting to understand the magnitude of the conversation, threw his head back and laughed a laugh that used to drive me crazy. 

 

“Oh, a guy you met at the bar, you say?” Sam continued, and all the glares in the world wouldn’t get rid of the gleam his own eyes possessed, the one that knew he’d backed me into what he considered to be a pretty amusing corner, and I rarely agreed. 

 

“That’s...damn it, that’s not what I meant, you asshole,” I grumbled, though was trying my best to share in the laughs. 

 

“It’s the bartender. I guess I looked especially depressed the other night and he was askin’ me if I was alright ‘n stuff. You know, the typical bartender stuff,” I explained. “It’s a pretty nice place, has some damn good scotch, so I kept goin’ back and running into him. Nothing weird.”

 

“Sounds a little weird if you ask me!” my dad decided to roar, and I realized with an instantly heavy heart that he was the only one in the fastly shrinking room that did so. Eyes flicking back and forth between the other two occupants within those four walls, I searched for some form of ignorance, for some sign that told me they didn’t know me as well as they seemed to, but my search proved to be fruitless. The tension in the air was burning away at what little defenses I had left and I was left to wait anxiously for someone to change the subject away from a topic that I didn’t even understand myself. 

 

“So,” Bobby announced, clearing his throat as if on some God-send of a cue. “I think we all can agree on the fact that we’re mighty glad to see Sam again.”

 

My dad clenched his jaw tight, the first time he’d taken his lips fully away from his beer all evening.

 

We were tiptoeing on glass. 

 

Every topic of conversation that could be brought up had to be condensed or watered down around my father. He simply felt so strongly about so many things, and his strong feelings often translated into shouts of anger, fits of rage, and would surely cause the departure of my younger brother for the next two years. Sam and I had gone over what was to be mentioned and what was to be kept in the dark, and Sam’s college life was one filed away into the latter category. Bobby had not been there for such a discussion, however, and every nerve in my brain was screaming in both tension and anxiety over the unknown. 

 

I was out of practice, really. I couldn’t gage the damage such a statement would do to my father because I couldn’t quite so accurately tell how far gone he was anymore. While it was safe to say he’d started much earlier, the tang of his breath beating down on my left cheek a sure sign of it, I wasn’t sure of the extent. It’d been a few years since I’d stayed at home. It’d been a few years since I’d witnessed the process firsthand. 

 

“Wasn’t sure if you’d ever come back, to be honest,” Dad replied with eyes wide and honest, just like he’d said. A drop of his beer sloshed from its container and I watched it dampen the carpet under our feet. 

 

Sam had seen the drop fall to the floor as well and attempted to busy himself with the sight of it, trying his best to avoid the question in a way I rarely ever saw him do. If I remembered correctly, which I did, it was Sam who’d always been the advocate for telling the truth and confronting things head on, and he’d never been one to shrink away from Dad’s challenges. Why in hell was he starting then?

 

“Heh...well…” He muttered, as if words were teasing the outskirts of his lips but none dared to pass the full way through. Instead, he settled on giving me a trying glance, a glance full of desperation and the call for help, and it felt like a blow to the stomach. What in the world was I supposed to say? 

 

“Let’s just be happy he’s payin’ us a visit now, okay?” I suggested. Despite the poor quality of the response, it beat whatever Sam would’ve thrown into the flame, and I couldn’t leave him there, hung out to dry. 

 

Unfortunately, Dad wasn’t entirely satisfied with the answer I provided him with, probably because it didn’t come from the mouth of the son who his question was directed at, and pressed on further. His voice had dipped lower now. 

 

“Did he ever plan on it though?” He tested, raising his eyebrows. “Or was this another one of those ideas you went ‘n planted in his head, Dean?”

 

Before I could even process the magnitude of what I’d just heard and before it really made it past the front of my very eardrums, Sam had run to the line of fire. His words were hot and molten as they spewed from his mouth and flew forward at such a rate that I had to abandon my analysis of Dad’s words. I didn’t have the time to understand what he’d meant, how he apparently thought I influenced Sam for the worse, and tried my best to keep up with the continued exchange as it grew increasingly more heated.

 

“Dean didn’t plant anything in my head. I wanted to come down and visit, since I didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms.”

 

Don’t you give me that sass, boy.

 

That’s what Dad would’ve told Sam fifteen years ago, and might’ve been planning on saying then, judging by the crease in his brow. 

 

“Hell, that’s somethin’ to drink to,” my dad said, and my brother nearly lost it in a plume of smoke while Bobby sat back in dismay, in awe and horror over the chaos that had ensued because of his singular statement. And it was all I could do to eye Sam, beg him not to play on those stingingly ironic words that had just been said. We didn’t need anymore tension or conflict and no amount of satisfaction or proven points could convince me otherwise of that.

 

“Please,” I mouthed, sure that our father wouldn’t see. 

 

It was my famous last and unspoken word.

 

“Do you really want me to go there? Do you really?” Sam snarled. I watched his knuckles tighten and turn white around the neck of his beer bottle until I was sure it would shatter and slice into his skin at the force of it all. None of us wanted him to go there, not even my father who often times was simply looking for a reason to scream, but Sam seemed to be indulging himself after not seeing our father for those two long, desolate years. 

 

“Be my guest,” my dad spat. Sam took every liberty available to him, exhausted my dad’s hospitality, and certainly was his guest in every sense of the damn word. 

 

“Why is it so damn impossible to have a civil conversation with you, huh?” Sam demanded. He arose from his seat, arms spread wide with his drink still clutched within his powerful fingers, and challenged my dad to do the same, who followed with about half as much grace.

 

My brother continued,

 

“Why is it so damn hard to get close to you? To be enough for you? To please you? To be the ‘son you always wanted?’ Have any idea?”

 

Sam flung the bottle in my dad’s face, waving it just under his upturned and flaming red nose, as though he was wafting the fumes into his nose in generous helpings. John Winchester didn’t even flinch and remained unblinking, stiff like a soldier.

 

“THIS!” Sam exclaimed. “THIS is why it all is so fucking hard. THIS is what is holding you back!” Suddenly I saw the bottle be flung from his grasp, cascade to the floor, and the rest of its contents spill onto the shag flooring in one large, damp spot. I watched it seep inward with too much attentiveness as the scene played out in front of me, and I felt Bobby’s laser-like gaze burn its own hole into the back of my head. What was he waiting for, me to step in?

 

Please.

 

“Alcohol ruined you, Dad. It tore it all down. Once we lost Mom-”

 

“Don’t,” I heard, from another source. It took me a moment to identify it as my father. And, disregarding Dad’s simply phrased command, Sam did it anyway.

 

“Once we lost Mom, I KNOW it was hard. I can’t imagine what it was like having Dean and I on your own. But she left us to you, she trusted you. You broke that trust, Dad! You broke it-no, you break it every time you pick up a beer and drink too much. Every time you get a little too out of it. That’s why we’re here now! If you’d only-”

 

“You better shut your damn mouth boy,” Dad growled, low and rumbling, and he was barely even slurring anymore. “If you know what’s good for you. You have no clue what you’re talking about. You have no idea what it was like, losing Mary, and being stuck with-”

 

“I have no idea what it’s like? Okay, fine!” Sam interrupted and I knew the arguments were already lined up in the back of his mind like lambs to the slaughter, ready to serve their purpose without so much as a batted eyelash. It wasn’t their compliance or their magnitude that bothered me, because I’d known Sam had a lawyer’s mind, it was their content. Upon hearing his final syllable, chills erupted across the outskirts of my arms and up and down my spine as the ghost of my own name danced around Sam’s tongue, daring to be said.

 

Every fiber of my being was begging Sam to leave me out of it. I’d defended him enough in my lifetime. I’d driven all the way to see my long-lost brother upon being asked to do so, I was merely doing him a favor, and I did not need the scene that was playing out in front of me, like a movie in which every scene had been ingrained into my head. This exact argument had occurred countless times in the past and was the same down to the last detail: the tone of voice, the word choice, the redenned faces, the rapid arm movements, the alcoholic additives, and even the beverage seeping into the carpeted floor beneath my trembling feet. Everything was practically muscle memory at that point, which is why I shouldn’t have been so blatantly horrified when Sam’s strained, fury-driven speech uttered the single syllable of my name. But I was. More so than I cared to admit or was capable of hiding.

 

“Ask Dean.”

 

Please.

 

“Ask Dean what it’s been like all these years. You’re right, I barely have a clue. Everything was already laid out for me when I was old enough because Dean put it all there for me. I’ve seen what you’ve done to him, Dad, and-”

 

“I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. Dean...Dean was...he was being your brother, it wasn’t-”

 

I knew that the stuttering in my dad’s speech was brought on by nothing but the lack of oxygen in his brain and the poison making its own way through his bloodstream, but I liked to entertain the thought of his words failing him. This argument, like I said, had happened many times before, and each time I allowed myself to pretend that my father was failing in putting together full, coherent sentences because he knew what Sam was saying had some right to it. And yet, at the same time, I wished Sam would shut up. There was just nothing in the world to gain from the yelling and I couldn’t bear to think of him leaving again, being thrown from my dad’s latest dwelling, and finish the deja-vu session I was trapped in. 

 

“He did a hell of a lot more than just ‘be my brother,’ that’s for sure!” Sam spat. “You walked all over him. You let him pick up your pieces.”

 

I think I cleared my throat. I can remember the scratching somewhere deep within my vocal chords and how the sound reverberated off of my chest, but not much of what came after it. I can recall the look in my brother’s eyes, their hazel hue full of desperation and the anger I’d made him swear to suppress, and if he thought for a second that I would be able to help him, he had another thing coming. I’d had every intention of keeping my mouth nearly sewn shut, cut off from every chance of confrontation, and upon arriving at my dad’s I’d thought Sam had the same intentions as well. The pleading gaze that was spilling forth from his irises, however, told me differently. 

 

Even if I wanted to speak up, even if I wanted to voice whatever inner demons I’d had locked in some backwards hall of my heart, I wouldn’t know where to start. I didn’t know how to break away from my dad’s grip, how to pry open his fingers from around my shoulders and throat until the force left pinkened fingerprints in my skin. And perhaps the reaction was psychosomatic, but I felt my own hands crawl upwards along my neck and rest on its back, fitting in the place where those markings had appeared so many years ago. 

 

Sam sighed with defeat upon realizing he wasn’t going to get much of a reply out of me, the one soul in the room that could successfully prove every single one of his points to be true, and his burning glare only increased my own grip along the back of my neck, where my spinal cord jetted outward of my skin. It was all I could do to trace the outlines they made and wait for my brother to speak, which he did, and upon doing so I felt goosebumps light up the very surface my fingers were grazing across.

 

“He doesn’t...he won’t even say anything. He doesn’t even know how to face you, Dad,” Sam exclaimed, leaning forward and throwing his hands into the air with the intensity and heat of his words, though the severity was completely void and depleted from my dad’s face, and to be quite frank, it didn’t seem like he could care any less.

 

“If I hadn’t have had Dean, I wouldn’t even be here right now. He put up with all your bullshit, all these years, stuck it out for me, and you have the nerve to say that at least one of us doesn’t know what it’s like?”

 

“Well, he obviously didn’t do the best job, hm? I mean you left right when you got the chance, and here you are right now bad-mouthing your own damn father. That’s not how I raised Dean and you sure all hell didn’t turn out right,” my dad spat, never taking his unquivering eyes off of my own, eyes that could barely contain a steady, stable line of vision.

 

The actions that followed my dad’s final, closing arguments are still, to this day, a blur of shouts, beer, and the rush to grab my coat and leave. 

 

“John, okay, lay off,” Bobby finally said, standing up from his seat as my dad did the same, looking as though his chest had truly inflated with each hateful, degrading word that spewed from his drunken mouth. I was too busy rising up from my own seat on wobbly knees and telling myself that he didn’t mean it to think of much to say in reply, so my shattering and unstable mind settled on a few pointless stammers. It wasn’t of much use to answer to him; the damage had long since been done, and now it was being dragged up to the surface after sinking and going under many years ago. That nagging fear I’d carried on my sagging shoulders, the one I’d kept from every member of my family but had the strange urge and courage to relay to that one, singular bartender who had oddly enough appeared in the forefront of my mind, was loud and hot and very present.

 

I really had failed both my father and Sam. 

 

“Nah, nah...you guys brought this shit up,” Dad continued. Bobby’s hands were now pressed on his chest, pushing him backwards and trying to ease him back into his seat, and the scene playing out in front of was like scrolling through photo albums of old family memories.

“You’re the ones who all think I’m a drunk, that ‘imma lousy father, that I gotta be locked away ‘n some facility...well if you get to confess whatever the hell’s on your minds, then I do too!” 

 

“John, you’re talkin’ a boat-load ah nonsense,” Bobby insisted, finally catching Dad’s eyes and sending him a forbidding, dangerous look, though my father wasn’t in the state of mind to properly receive it. “Just shut up before you say somethin’ that you’ll regret, okay?”

 

“You wanna know how I feel?” He continued as he shoved Bobby’s hands away and pushed Sam aside, who was trying to get in the middle of Dad and I, which caused me to notice how his head no longer towered over my own. We were at eye-level with one another. 

 

“I miss the hell outta Sam, every day. I see Dean at least once a damn week but I never getta see Sam anymore, because he ran away the second he could,” he explained, eyeing everyone up before his gaze fell onto me. “I don’t know what kinda thoughts you planted into his head, boy, but he left and I was stuck with you, after I promised to keep you guys home, after I promised Mary I wouldn’t let ya outta my sight.”

 

My dad’s eyes were red and a watery, foreign substance was pooling around his lower eyelids, and no one in the world could convince me of what I was truly seeing.

 

“I-I didn’t screw up!” he shouted and his voice reached its peak volume, just as I reached my absolute limit. 

 

“It was you who screwed up Dean. I told you to never ever ever let Sam outta your sight, ‘n now he’s halfway across the country all the time and I’m stuck with you! I didn’t mess up, it was your one fuckin’ job. You did this, Dean, you-”

 

“C’mon now, you’re being ridiculous!” Bobby insisted, rising forward from his seat some and approaching me in some half-courageous, though still half-terrified stance of defense. I would’ve liked to be able to say that I was holding my own, that I’d been able to deny Bobby’s silent offer of protection against those words being spat mercilessly into my face and onto my shoulders, but that would be lying, and my father was doing enough lying to compensate for the three of us and then some. I held my tongue and looked on with disbelief, with a surreal, otherworldly sort of hurt throbbing within my chest. 

 

From the outskirts of my vision I saw Sam let out a long sigh and run his hands through his hair, the hair that he still hadn’t cut even when I’d insisted he keep it at a reasonable length all throughout his time in high school, and had a sudden, bittersweet flashback to all the times I’d given my younger brother haircuts. I assumed that my late mother had given him his very first haircut, since he’d been born with with a head of hair that quickly accumulated into the smaller version of what it was today, but I’d snipped away at his messy mane countless times over the years. One occasion stuck out the most to me, an occasion upon which three whole inches of dirty blonde was removed, was the first time Sam had asked me where Dad was. 

It had been an innocent question, so innocent in fact that it stung to even think about lying to Sammy, let alone doing it. But I’d been sworn onto every oath my Dad could think of to keep his whereabouts quiet, to keep Sam in the dark, warning me in great detail of the toll it could have on my “impressionable little brother” if he knew that he went out every night. To work is what he told me. I didn’t see what was so wrong with Sam knowing our father worked a ton, that maybe he’d even be proud someday to have such a hardworking dad, but he wouldn’t have it. I had to lie, and eventually my intuition had reached a point where I understood why.

 

“Dean...how come Dad’s never home?”

 

Snip-snip. Two thin locks of hair cascading to the motel floor below, which was covered in spare garbage bags I’d scrounged up, as I scrambled to find an answer. 

 

“Dad’s home a ton, Sammy, what do you-”

 

“No, he’s not. He always leave when I wake up ‘n he comes home when I’m going to bed,” Sammy insisted, and I could in the mirror in front of us both that a frown of annoyance and knowledge that a five year old shouldn’t have had emerged across Sam’s mouth. 

 

“Why?” he pestered when I didn’t reply right away.

 

“Dad...Dad’s just at work. He works a lot, ya see…” I pieced together, like a thin thread sewn in shakily through fabric. “But he comes home a lot. Remember the other day when we all went out to breakfast? He was home then!”

 

The frown deepened, and my spirits sunk further, and Sam responded, 

 

“That was two months ago, Dean.”

 

And, under his breath, he added,

 

“Bet he doesn’t even want to anyways…”

 

Snip-snip. I decided to block out his complaints and his interview-like inquiries for the time being so I could concentrate. I didn’t need anyone remarking about my poor haircut job because the subject had been talking my ear off the whole time, but I could feel Sam’s searing hazel eyes stare at the top of my head in the mirror as I worked, probably searching for the answer he was looking for in my mere body language, in the way I stood, or the way I spoke. I’d long since concluded that he was one of the most observant people I’d ever known.

 

After a few moments of tense silence, feeling as though I’d just been put under a microscope and examined like a scientific specimen, I stood back a half-step to admire my work and was satisfied. His shoulders and the first inch or so of his neck was now visible, in what my Dad called the “acceptable-manly-haircut-range,” and I deemed the job to be done. I clapped Sam once on the shoulder, signaling that he could move and get out whatever little-kid jitters he’d accumulated after sitting so perfectly still, but not before saying in a calm, gentle tone,

 

“Dad does a lot of things at work, and sometimes he comes late because he’s stressed and takes time off with his friends. That’s what he told me,” I explained, hoping the slow speed of my speech would avert Sam from taking apart my answer and realize what I meant underneath my choice of words. “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to go out to breakfast with us anymore, and it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about us anymore.”

 

And, to my immense relief, Sam’s frown evaporated into the brightest of smiles, brighter than even the color of his eyes, and not only did he accept my final attempt at satisfying his questions, he leapt up from the chair we’d stationed in the bathroom, turned around it in one clumsy, lopsided movement, and wrapped his thin, lanky arms around my middle. Even then, being a whole five years younger than myself, his head still came up to just under my chin. 

 

“Okay, I believe you,” he said into my shirt. He craned his neck upwards, however, when uttering his last comment,

 

“I’m glad you give me haircuts though, Dean. I don’t think Dad would be really good at them. Not like you are.”

 

I chuckled, ruffling his freshly cut hair until it stuck up in frayed bunches at the sides of his head.

 

“Heh, maybe I’ll do it when I’m all grown up. You can get free haircuts all the time.”

 

Sam said it was a great idea, and that he couldn’t wait to see me in one of “those black kinda-dresses that haircutters tie around their waists,” meaning aprons, and scampered off to find something to watch on TV. With his giggling form went the last of my good spirits and the last bits of any optimism I had though, and the scattered, broken sounds of his cartoons served as irritating background noise as I cleaned up the mess his hair had made across the bathroom floor. 

 

No amount of plans to become a cosmetologist or complements on my apparently commendable hairstyling skills could make me feel better or less guilty about lying. I hated lying to Sam about where our father was and what he was truly doing, or that he’d rather be here with us eating pancakes at backwater restaurants we found on the way from motel to motel. Dad told me his work traveled. By age eleven, I knew for sure that his spirit, attention span, and slim chances at being happy again were the things that traveled, and Sam knew this by age eight. 

 

But the ignorance Sam, and even myself had, was better than the fighting that ensued afterwards, better than the fighting taking place around me. I thought it all would fade away once Sam grew up, once he got past the fact that Dad was never truly going to be the father figure he deserved, but I realized that doing so was a tall order, one that Sam didn’t need to fill on his own, and that I was too weak to help him in. That’s why I’d kept feeding him that ignorance because it meant I could keep believing the lies too. It meant that I could keep lying to Sam because Dad had told me too, it meant that doing so was okay. It meant that Dad really was at work. It meant that Dad wasn’t wasted by six in the evening. And it meant that I could keep doing my job as Sam’s brother.

 

Dad had shattered that job though in one simple phrase,

 

“I didn’t mess up, it was your one fuckin’ job.”

 

Sam shouldn’t be there right now, he shouldn’t know that our dad was a drunk, he shouldn’t know about how shitty my life had been, or how I’d tried so hard to make sure his turned out better. He should be at Stanford and have the blurry faces of his brother and father in the back of his mind, taking up no more room than a distant, clouded memory, but instead he was there running his hands through his hair that I missed cutting and stressing out over all the things that I’d struggled to keep exclusively on my shoulders and my shoulders only. 

 

I’d completely failed him, and I couldn’t take their current screaming that served as a constant reminder of that.

 

“Guys!” I shouted, suddenly, using my last bit of courage on a single outburst to gain their attention. In an instant, Bobby, Sam, and my dad’s eyes all fell onto my figure, which had now risen fully out of my seat and was standing with both feet planted firmly on the floor below. To those who lacked an inside look at the workings of my quickly failing mind, one might think that I was about to resolve the situation, or perhaps ease the tension, reveal something of great worth and stature that could help everyone come to a consensus. But such an assumption couldn’t have been more wrong, and judging by the way Sammy was staring at me with eyes sadder than I’d seen in years, even sadder than the day he’d said goodbye to me and flown to the West Coast, he was not under any such impression. He just knew me too well. 

 

“This isn’t what I wanted. I didn’t haul ass all the way down here to watch you guys scream and yell at each other about things we all know are never gonna improve,” I exclaimed, clasping and unclasping my hands together rapidly in a pitiful attempt to busy them, to distract myself from the lump of emotion that had lodged itself into my throat. Once I realized what my impromptu speech would require me to say next though, all efforts to remain strong and respectable flew into the wind.

 

“Fuck…” I murmured, running my fingers up and down my face so they couldn’t see its redness. “I...Dad, I know I screwed up. Sammy left and you got worse and I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

 

Sam wasn’t having it.

 

“Dean, what the hell? This isn’t your fault! It’s not your ‘job’ to make sure I don’t leave or that-”

 

My eyes flicked to Sam and he fell silent, immediately, though it looked as if someone had clamped a hand over his mouth and prevented him, by force, from speaking. There wasn’t a single word that he could say that would make me think any differently. 

 

Dad was throwing daggers through his gaze, grinding his together like he was chomping on metal, and it took the last slivers of self-control that I had to not clamp my own mouth shut and just sit back down, wishing to hell and back that everyone would forget what I’d said, but I didn’t, because all I could think about was my failed career in cosmetology and Sam’s arms around my middle and how badly I wanted it all back again. My dad needed to know that.

 

“But...shit, I couldn’t keep him back forever. He knew you were full of it from the day he turned, what, eight years old? How was I supposed to keep him in the dark about you? About Mom?” I pleaded. There wasn’t a shift in my dad’s eyes, and I nearly marveled at the way even his wasted self could maintain such a fatherly glare. Eventually, I simply took it as a sign to continue and not stop until I’d finished my entire piece. 

 

“I had to let him go. I had to let him move on, or he’d be wasting all that craziness he has in his head. I had to give him the chance that I never had. Hell, I wanted him to go so badly for himself that I couldn’t stand it and for once in my goddamn life I didn’t think about what you would say. I thought about Sammy, entirely.”

 

I shook my head, shedding off all of the useless words in search for the perfectly compiled follow up statement, but once the first syllables had passed my tongue I’d known I failed. 

 

“And I’m still so sorry. I wanted to help you and Sam but now you guys fuckin’ hate each other and I...I can’t do this anymore. I don’t even know WHAT I’m doing anymore, I just can’t…”

 

The leather of my jacket touched down on my shoulders before I even knew I’d picked it up in the first place. It’s touch startled me into sudden awareness of my audience and their gobsmacked expressions, as well as my Dad’s version of a reply that I would be lying, again, if I said I didn’t expect. 

 

“You don’t think I tried? You don’t think I gave it my EVERYTHING for you boys? What the hell are you gettin’ at, Dean, talkin’ about all these ‘chances you never had’ bullshit?”

 

I heard my own footsteps creak their way across the rickety hardwood floor as I approached the door, and I pretended like my dad’s shrieks of rage were nothing more than Sam’s cartoons buzzing around in the back of my head, background noise to an equally as somber, defeated scene. 

 

“Dad, are you KIDDING ME right now?!” Sam shouted, with desperation flooding into his voice, but Dad ignored him without so much as a pause in his relentless output of denial and defense.

 

“I lost everything when Mary died. You were his brother, Dean. You HAD to look out for him, you had no choice, just like I had no choice to carry on when Mary died-”

“Dad, you didn’t ‘carry on’-” Sam interjected, background noise.

 

“I counted on you. I relied on you. Yeah, I’m sorry if moving around was hard, if you guys wanted to eat more than fuckin’ cereal every day, but I tried so hard-”

 

Background noise.

 

“You’re not serious right now!” 

 

Background noise.

 

“-to make things as best as I could. You have no IDEA how much I wanted you two with me, how much I need you two, and now Sam’s off away at school and you-”

 

Background noise.

 

“Dad just SHUT UP!”

 

“John, you’re acting like a damn five year old! Just take a second, relax, Jesus Christ…”

 

“You LET HIM! We lost Sammy!”

 

“Dean, where are you-?”

 

Everything was background noise apart from my words of departure, which I mumbled in a tone so shaky and trembling so intensely that I barely recognized it as my own. It didn’t seem to do much to calm the storm my weak and somewhat vain attempt at a confession to my father had started. I doubt still that anyone else in the room, even Sam, had heard it, but it flew into the electric-infused space air around us that was being sucked in by angry lungs and returned with the fiery aftertaste of hurtful, long suppressed words. I even watched it fizzle out, just like the last of my spirits had the moment it crawled past my lips.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m heading out.”

 

I shut the bulky door behind me with a dull thud, the sound barely making a dent in that screaming, sizzling noise that I’d left behind, and my back immediately fell onto its wooden surface the moment the icy, nearly-winter air touched my face. The cold didn’t bother me though; I could barely feel the frostbite nip at the bridge and end of my nose and the tips of my fingers. I couldn’t feel the crookedness of my jacket, falling lopsided on my shoulders, or the harsh intake of freezing air my lungs were enduring. It was all numb, all blocked out, all desensitized, except for the singular hot drop of moisture making its way down my pinkening cheek, probably freezing in the process, but still making a damp streak on my tender skin in the process.

 

I’d even failed Sammy then by leaving him to fend for himself in that hellhole of a home, a home that would be vacated by its current dweller in the next four weeks or so, and then this entire process would be repeated again, eventually, the difference being the fact that my younger brother may just have to do it alone. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it was that had made Dad’s words sting so much or what had made Sam’s defense of me so hard to listen to, but there was no way I was capable of putting myself through it again. There wasn’t much point. Obviously it was clear that I was a failure in my father’s eyes, I was letting my brother down once again at that very second, and the only other friend I thought I had had sat in almost full silence as I’d been torn apart. 

 

Where was I supposed to go then?

 

A gleam of blue headlights dashing down the dimly lit street gave me the answer, the solution being found in the shade of aquamarine being projected by the vehicle’s front light-bulbs.

 

It was certainly stretching things, but I needed an unbiased listener. I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t being selfish and that maybe I deserved to take just one day off from the rampage of chaos I called my life. I needed to listen to the shitty jukebox in the corner, I needed to marvel at the oddities that passed on through, I needed to lean lazily against the bar’s old, weathered surface, I needed to drink scotch without any aggravating ice cubes, and I needed to hear the rough around the edges yet soothing voice of the only person in my life who was totally on my side. 

 

Flinging myself into my car, I switched on the radio and removed the Van Halen tape, trading it out of the angriest rendition of Iron Maiden songs I could find, and I drove in search of my place of solace. At a red light I wondered if the feelings running through my system then were at all like what my father had experienced every time he ran away in search of a drink to numb out his system, but quickly discarded the notion. 

 

I highly doubted my father had met someone quite like Castiel Novak. There was no way in hell he’d gotten onto good terms with the socially awkward, fantastically observant, and just plain old gentle blue-eyed, dark haired bartender who appeared to have some inexplicable interest in listening to my problems. I couldn’t imagine my own dad confessing more about his life to this stranger-become-circumstantial friend than he ever had to anyone who wasn’t there to experience it firsthand along with him, and I couldn’t imagine this someone could’ve taken it as well as Castiel Novak did with me. It was impossible that my own father had felt the same way I had when Cas had spoken such heartfelt words to me, the way my own blood-pumper had increased its speed tenfold, or that my dad could’ve thought about his eyes or the funny, forever curious expression that appeared on his face every waking hour. 

 

My dad had never met someone quite like Castiel Novak, and had never experienced the same emotions I still was, even as the street the pub Castiel worked at came into view over the horizon. He’d never had someone listen and be there for him like Cas had for me in the short amount of time that I’d known him, and that’s where we were different. I had a positive purpose in traveling almost religiously to my new favorite pub, while my dad possessed no such thing. I knew a familiar face there and relished every second I got to spend time with it, while my dad simply went to get fucked up.

 

We were the same in one aspect, however: we both tended to use people. My dad had used me to dump his responsibilities and stressors onto, and now I was about to dump all my worries, pieces, and fragments onto Cas’s undeserving shoulders. I just hoped that Cas wouldn’t leave me like I’d just walked out on my dad, quickly realized how unfair that was, and as I pulled into the pub’s parking lot, I wiped away the last of those insistent tears. 

 

I was a mess, nothing more than one of the regular messes that came through to pester Cas. Why was I at all special?

 

***

CASTIEL

 

“What, leading a religious life has never crossed your mind? I don’t believe it!”

 

“No, I...I can’t say that it has…”

 

“Well you may want to look into it. I can see it in your eyes K.C.-er, Carter-”

 

“Castiel.”

 

The dark eyed man, the hue of his irises deepened by the circles under his eyelids and the shadows his deep brow was casting downward, nodded his head vigorously after being reminded of my name, which I’d told him a good six times that evening, and I imagined myself rolling my own tired eyes in annoyance. I held them still, however, choosing politeness over my irritation’s relief. 

 

“Ah yes, Castiel. Sorry about that, sometimes when some good ol’ liquor gets in my system, I can get pretty weak in the memory department!”

 

He tapped the temple of his head with his knuckle, belonging to the hand that was clutching his glass, and before long he’d spilled a large amount of his drink on his already soiled, light blue sweater. I didn’t laugh, merely tossed him a clean rag I kept under the bar and left him to his own devices, creepy giggles, and slurs of Jesus Christ and the clergy.

 

I’d been stuck within the clutches of that particularly uncomfortable conversation for a good forty-two minutes, if my laser-like attention on the wall clock, still stationed above the door, proved to be accurate and precise enough, and it was around the fifteen minute mark that I began sincerely doubting the other half of the exchange’s own religious devotion. The copious amount of “good ‘ol liquor” he’d consumed since his very much pronounced arrival (he’d tripped onto his face on the way in, obviously already intoxicated) was rivaled by few. And perhaps I would’ve found more amusement in his shenanigans, found his dedication to convincing me that he, himself, was a deacon at a local Catholic church and that I should come and join him in his endeavors to be more than mildly entertaining, and perhaps I would’ve allowed myself to indulge in whatever terribly inappropriate murmurings I could hear Charlie whisper to Kevin behind me, but I was far too distracted to do any of the above.

 

That Sunday was oddly significant, that significance evident in the absence I felt down towards the far right of the bar, near the side door and the trash bins, where my apparent soul mate and, somehow, my favorite regular was supposed to be. At least two weeks ago I’d thrown out his schedule of coming solely on Thursdays, and I’d even wondered upon peeling my groggy eyes open that morning if maybe he’d stop by later to relay to me how his weekend had gone. As his friend Bobby had told me, it was a very important one for him, and I’d been waiting on the edge of my seat to hear how it turned out. 

 

A large piece of me was naive, I suppose. I just couldn’t wait to see Dean Winchester, hands resting comfortably in the pockets of his age-old jacket, with a smile on his face, eyes lit up with the relief of having reconciled with his broken apart family, walk through the front door and order drinks in a happy way. I wanted to serve the happy Dean, the soothed one, the relieved one, because it was the Dean I’d come to know the least and that fact was eating away at my heart the more I thought about it. It was more of a mental exercise to crane my memory and recall what he looked smiling versus what he looked like staring sadly at nothing, waiting for the night to pass.

 

But, in terms of Dean Winchester, there was little optimism to be found in the world. It was a rare occurrence to hear laugh or see him grin ear to ear, almost impossible without the aid of alcohol, and I guess that’s where that illogical hope was blooming out of. I couldn’t ignore it, of course. It was swelling up in the pit of my stomach, making my limbs tremble and twitch with excitement until I had to steady myself as I poured the pretend-deacon another glass of whatever his poison of choice was, I don’t remember, and each creak in the floorboards, mumble of a hello, or any such sign of an entrance enveloped every ounce of my attention until I realized Dean was nowhere to be seen. I would then proceed to sigh, ignore my coworker’s giggles, and carry on glumly.

 

I hoped and prayed with every fiber of my being that he would walk in smiling, a true smile full of unaltered reassurance and solace that meant things were to be okay in his whirlwind of an everyday life. Even as I observed the usually peaceful, prayerfully-inclined crowd around me, all falling under the respectable category apart from one, I couldn’t find a single recognizable face that deserved the calm and the relief more than Dean did. One may think I was very anti-religious in saying that, and maybe I was, but I wanted to see a good yet tragically broken man’s life work out for the best because I enjoyed his company, wanted more of it, and wanted what was best for him. 

 

And suddenly, as though my mind was shielded behind nothing more than wobbly plexiglass, Charlie appeared behind me with a arm full of trays and sparkles in her eyes. I decided then that I would speak to Kevin about rigging her up with some sort of an alarm system, and highly doubted that he would have any objections. 

 

“So, K.C., what’s this I hear about you becoming a priest…?” Charlie teased, plainly illuding to the names that the drunken phony had called me, and with a glance in his direction I saw that he was now singing some sort of psalm I could recall from my distant childhood.

 

“I’ve told him my name a good six times, simply because he asked for it…” I murmured, still confused as to what the man’s motives were. I should’ve been intrigued, of course, in finding out, but it didn’t seem of much purpose to me then.

 

“That guy’s a total psycho, a nutjob,” Charlie concluded as she placed the load of dishes on a cart being pushed stealthily into the kitchen and, ignoring the look of pure hatred the busboy gave her for increasing his workload, she leaned back against the wall next to the cascading shelves of liquor and crossed her arms around her chest. 

 

“Probably thinks Jesus Christ himself is coming down in the morning to save us all, in a fiery storm of hell and sin…” she muttered with a smirk, rolling her eyes in the back of her head. 

 

“He did mention something about the coming of Christ,” I answered, slyly, taking the opportunity to be humorous in strides and as a great comfort. “But the hell and sin part is to come within the next week or so, I believe, so he’s just preparing now I suppose.”

 

Charlie sent me a beaming grin, just before flinging her head back in a laugh so pure and uplifting that I fought the urge to do the same. There was that part of me still, so heavily distracted and distant from reality, so obsessive and illogical and a little compulsive, that wouldn’t allow me to do so, however, and no matter how hard I tried to hide its existence, my coworker and so-happened-to-be best friend picked up on the presence and sighed. It really did feel as though the walls of my head were windows and she was peering directly inside. 

 

“Ya know,” she began, dropping her voice lower in the sentimentally serious range, and I knew a load of hefty subject matter was coming my way. That annoying piece of my mind that wouldn’t stop running at a mile a minute just wouldn’t let me prepare for it.

 

“I did have an actual point in bugging you right now, besides attempting to save you from the Jesus freaks and ‘apocalypse-now’ crazies.”

 

“I do appreciate the rescue,” I chuckled, a little dryly, because my eyes and general attention didn’t want to focus on anything. 

 

“Anytime, dude,” Charlie replied and then quickly continued on her journey to the point of the conversation, a journey that was typically long and a little tiring on the listener’s part, but in that moment I wished that she would take all the time in the world. 

 

She cleared her throat,

 

“Anyways...I feel like I owe you an apology. For being an asshole.”

 

I was instantly lost as to what her intentions were and where I was supposed to follow her words. Where in the world had that come from? Never had there been a time in the years that I’d know Charlie Bradbury where I had ever been truly upset or angry with her; I’d thought such a emotion was impossible to direct her way. Yes, there was the occasional episode where her pestering made its way just centimeters under my skin, caused a little itch of annoyance, and sometimes I did roll my eyes at her forgetfulness when it came to placing the supply closet keys in random places, and her sneaky methods of getting out of closing up shop weren’t ideal, but everything’s frustration put together wouldn’t even equal the irritation a papercut caused. Charlie was lovely, always. 

 

The only thing I could think of that she’d done in the past month or so that could’ve aggravated me, just slightly, was her nudging and joking and her implications about the regular I’d just been thinking about moments before, but…

 

Oh.

 

“I...I know I bug you way too much about that Dean Winchester guy, and it must be annoying as hell,” she admitted, shuffling her sneakered feet over each other, creating a quiet yet mildly painful squeaking noise. “I know you started talking to him just because you’re an awesome bartender and you were just being polite, and whatever reasons you have for talking to him isn’t any of my business, and I just wanted to say sorry for making it into something it wasn’t, or being intrusive. I don’t know…”

 

I shook my head the moment she ceased speaking, desperate to let her know that it was okay, fine, great, even, because even though her constant murmurings and sly smirks about Dean had made me want to rip my hair out piece by piece and strand by strand, they’d really helped me realize something. And, regardless of how ridiculous the something was, it meant a lot to me. 

 

“No...no Charlie, don’t apologize,” I stammered as I stitched my reply together in a way that would include each point I wanted to make in a way that wasn’t too insensitive or factual. “It’s fine, truly. I know you were only joking. I shouldn’t have taken it so harshly.”

 

After pausing for a moment to consider what the rest of my answer would be, I made a rather split-second decision and decided to follow the advice I’d begged Dean himself to follow: confide in someone. Confide in a source you knew you could trust, one that was unbiased, and I knew if I was serious enough, Charlie would suffice just fine.

 

“I...I don’t think your theories on the matter are totally false, either,” I mumbled, stumbling and gawking over the words that were coming out of my own mouth once the sound hit my ears. “At least, fifty percent of the way.”

 

I watched Charlie’s already large, glittering eyes grow wide with surprise, a surprise that I myself was shocked to see illuminate her irises since she had been the one so adamant in proving that I was “into Dean Winchester,” and not in the platonically curious way, and I was the one who was supposed to be the most surprised. I was admitting a huge, massive revelation to myself out loud for the first time ever, correct?

 

“I guess I’ve taken your hypothesis on my feelings about Dean Winchester to heart and, well, I suppose, theoretically, there could be more there than just a platonic interest, but I know that such a feeling is not mutual, which is totally, absolutely okay, and I don’t expect-”

 

Her eyes didn’t stop enlarging and just as I was sure they were about to just pop out of her head, followed by the dislocation of her agape jaw, her hand rose up from its limp position at her side and fell onto my shoulder in a weak grasp. Upon further examination, I saw that her pupils weren’t even focused on my face, or anywhere close to my face, for that matter, but I didn’t dare follow her line of vision. Its target was somewhere behind me, close to the front door, I presumed, and judging by the clanging of the door bell and the nearly-winter chill that blew across my clothed arms, someone had entered. It didn’t take a rocket scientist or a psychic to guess who’d just walked into the pub, either.

 

“Do you mean that?” Charlie whispered, breath as fleeting and chilled as the breeze cascading up and down my button-down’s sleeves, somehow touching down on my skin, and I was enveloped in goose bumps. 

 

I did mean it. I meant in every possible way, truth, context, and situation, but it suddenly became six times more difficult to admit out loud again once my intuition told me the identity of the newest customer. Yet, perhaps it was the tightened grip on my shoulder accompanied by several heavy, distressed, and achingly familiar footsteps that snapped me back into my train of thought, back into reality, and back into my ability to speak.

 

“Yes.”

 

Charlie nodded her head forward, ever so slightly, before locking eyes with my own and staring more intensely than I’d ever experienced in my life, as though she was sending me off to war, off to my death bed, and about to beg and plead and urge me to survive. And, by the looks of my trembling hands and unnerved stomach, such a comparison was startlingly accurate. 

 

“Prove it to me then, Cas,” she announced, low and firm and scarily, before adding the last bit that sealed the deal,

 

“I think he needs you right now.”

 

And then she sent me on my way. She patted my shoulder, dipped her head in a way far too discreet and casual for the magnitude of the situation, and followed the path of the busboy that passed earlier without so much as a glance backwards in my direction. No reassurance, no encouragement, no support, nothing. I was a sole survivor trying to make it on an island, the last of a troop of soldiers, the last human alive in the apocalypse my previous customer had ranted so passionately about, and there was no other living soul in sight for miles and miles.

 

At least, not until I turned around.

 

It was like looking back into the past and seeing Dean Winchester enter my place of work for the very first time, the exact same way he had days upon days ago, every detail correct down to the very slouch of his shoulders and the noise of his feet creaking into the floorboards and to his lack of eye contact with any other soul in his remote proximity. I had to remind myself that I knew a great deal about the form making its slow yet sure and firm way towards me, that I could predict the very way in which he would take his seat and sip his drink, and that I had no reason to be afraid of interacting with him. I knew how. I knew how to handle him.

 

Dean Winchester didn’t change or shift his line of vision until he’d reached his destination, perched himself heavily onto a barstool at the very far right corner of the bar, away from all other life forms, the motion earning a great, hefty creak from the chair’s structure, placed his hands on the counter, loosely folded, and let out the most minute yet poorly concealed sighs of what I hoped wasn’t despair that I’d heard pass his lips. I tried my hardest to reassure myself that everything was okay, feeling the quakes of a nervous terror bloom somewhere in that part of e that had accepted Charlie’s incessant theories, and would’ve been successful in doing so, had Dean’s head remained cast down and had I not dared to approach him in the way I was so obligated to do.

 

He moved first, like an old engine roaring to life, but this life seemed far worse than the previous one. Instead of the anger lighting up his freckled face red and blotched, instead of the crease in his eyebrows that cast wrinkles down on his cheeks that far surpassed his age, or instead of his passive kind of sadness, there was something new lying in his features that I didn’t know how to handle, contrary to the belief I had that I tried to soothe myself with.

 

Dean’s green, flecked eyes were damp with tears, not emerging forth past his eyelids, but plentiful enough that they pooled and glimmered in the dim lighting overhead. His shoulders trembled with every slow intake of breath and his face, not contorted into an expression of frustration of his drunken sort of aggression, was lax and sad and distant, long gone, it seemed like, and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t something I’d predicted in the least, wasn’t something that I could understand, not an outcome that I could’ve anticipated, and certainly wasn’t a situation that I knew how to deal with. Unfortunately, this realization didn’t come to me until my own hands were lying near Dean’s, shaking in a way vastly similar to his own, and he was looking straight at me. Trying to find answers. Trying to find reassurance or support, something that I could not give him.

 

Upon meeting my own petrified gaze, Dean wiped his eyes and nose clumsily on the sleeve of his shirt, after having taken his jacket off and placing in on his seat, without much shame. He appeared to be entirely exhausted, like he’d given up in a battle or struggle that I was unaware of. In the midst of my desperate attempts to construct some sort of hypothesis as to why he’d arrived in such a state of mind, I heard my subject clear his throat and try to steady his breathing. He was about to speak.

“Sorry to come today, not usually one of my scheduled visits I guess…” he muttered, his try for humor only making the very sight of him all the more pitiful.

 

“No...no, it’s quite alright,” I answered. My hands had drawn away from his after sensing that we’d brushed knuckles, and they now were stuffed violently into the pockets of my pants. “I’m glad you’re here.”

 

Dean nodded his head and then ran his hands through his strangely disorderly hair, its appearance most likely brought about by the weather dragging on mercilessly outside, yet it seemed as though everything about him was deteriorating in a way that I couldn’t grasp how to help stop. It was absolutely maddening, almost as maddening as the strain and the pauses in his voice.

 

“Heh...I...I don’t have much good news to bring to the table today…”

 

“That’s not why you’re here,” I corrected him, adamant in making my point. “If...if you need to talk about anything, you know I’ll listen.”

 

Dean smiled and lowered his hands, dropping one to the side of his face where he lay against it, and, seizing the opportunity, I went to retrieve the drink I knew he’d order, grabbed a glass, and began to pour while watching the changes in his facial expressions. They went from a sad smile, to wallowing in an unidentifiable misery, to curiosity, directed at me, and then back to his sad smile.

 

“I’m so predictable.”

 

I shook my head no. He was very keen on insulting himself that day, whether it be humorously or not.

 

“Like I said before, that’s not true. I’m just rather good at paying attention.”

 

There was nothing said in response to that and I filled the gap in communication by placing his drink in front of his wavering vision, and he took it upon impact, throwing it back and downing at least half of the contents in one go while I did my best to mask my shock and worry at just what had driven him to this state.

 

“You really shouldn’t have to listen to a whiny sonuvabitch like me though, not fair to you…”

 

I was trying my hardest to maintain my calm and composure, to not lash out as his sudden inability to cease insulting himself or putting himself down, but it wasn’t proving to be easy. It took two hands to count the amount of times that I’d reassured Dean Winchester that his venting to me was not harmful, annoying, or tedious in the least, yet whatever had gotten into him that day seemed to have erased his memory of all such occasions. I soon found myself staring at the top of his head, waiting for his eyes that were trained on his glass of poison-of-choice to lift once more and explain himself, though I was beginning to doubt if that was expecting too much.

Eventually, however, I saw Dean’s shoulders sag in a sigh and his lips parted slightly, over and over again, in search for the words he needed to stitch together his reply, and I waited patiently for as long as I was capable. 

 

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” he finally asked. His eyes were so glossed over that I could see my reflection in their green, but that also prompted me to realize just how close I was leaning into him. 

 

“You’re distressed about something,” I answered steadily and slowly. “Until you feel well enough to tell me and get it off your chest, I’ll wait here.”

 

Dean chuckled weakly, the sound very dissatisfying in comparison to what one of his true laughs must sound like, and shook his head no in that damned kind of denial that sent chills of frustration and worry coursing through me. He was never this casual and this defeated in his troubles; he was supposed to be angry and fired up, but this was something else entirely. 

 

“Bobby stopped by, right?” he added suddenly, after taking a smaller, shyer sip of his drink and I denied the fact that I watched his neck contract as he swallowed.

 

“Bobby Singer? Old dude, baseball cap, smells like liquor ‘n smoke?” he prompted. I’d forgotten to answer after getting so embarrassingly distracted. 

 

“Y-yes...he did. Last night we spoke for a while,” I stammered. It seemed, out of the blue, like Bobby and I’s conversation had occurred many days ago, not just a mere twenty four hours. So much had conspired in that span of time, not necessarily to myself but to Dean, especially, and that made it seem as though the length of the typical day had increased tenfold. But then, it made sense to me.

 

“I’m meeting the boys at their dad’s house tomorrow...and that’s sure to be exciting. Not the good kind, either.”

 

The Dean that I was being faced with then, the one with the sad eyes, slouching shoulders, crumbling walls and inability to find any worth in himself, was the aftermath of his trip to his father’s. Bobby had been right, and now his words weren’t only echoing in my ears like a flashback, they were being blared against my eardrums like a megaphone was inches away. I didn’t wince from the volume, however, just my stupidity and ignorance, as well as my shattered hopes. I’d thought, maybe since Sam and Dean had reunited and reconciled well, that the same luck and family-born love would transfer to the second of visits, but I’d been very wrong. The evidence was refraining from staring me in the face, of course, but it was just as plain to see nevertheless.

 

“I’m glad to hear that you and your brother are doing well again, Dean,” I said, noting my voice was now a whisper of shaking sincerity mixed with the sensation of walking on glass. 

 

“I am too. Didn’t see it coming, really,” he answered, honestly, and while it did little to ease my nerves, I was grateful for Sam. I’d never met him, but if my judgment proved mostly correct, it must’ve been Dean’s younger brother that had alleviated whatever tension was between them. I knew that there was no way Dean would’ve been able to swallow down the hurt and the guilt to make amends on his own.

 

Which is why I made the next move, as usual, and prompted Dean to speak once more. I believe one could compare the situation to an unsure animal being lured slowly outside, into an unrecognizable environment, except Dean was no such thing, and there was pain within him instead of simple fear of the unknown. 

 

“Mr. Singer-uh...Bobby...also informed me that you and your brother planned to visit your father. Did that go as planned?” I pressed, hoping my strategy would prove to be successful. And Dean ran his free hand through his hair before speaking, eyes closed with a loud release of breath and an attempt to remove memories from his mind that had only transpired a few hours ago.

 

“If by go as planned, you mean did we go?” he retorted, looking to me briefly for either a nod or a shake of my head, and I supplied neither. (In retrospect, I realize that I should have, but Dean continued anyways.)

 

“Yeah, we went. Found our way to his latest dump of a house. He moves once every two months, for Christ’s sake.”

 

Even though I’d refrained from actually telling Dean that his response was not entirely what I meant, I could tell from his choice of words and tone that the question I did have in mind had already been answered. 

 

“Was it...okay? Were things well?” It was a waste of words, but I hoped it would convey that I cared. 

 

Dean laughed again in the low, dry way he had been and his face contorted into an expression that I didn’t want to see, like my question was forcing words out of his throat in a way so hurtful he couldn’t handle it. It was a silent form of crumbling, a silent way of losing all hope, a silent notice of defeat and exile. 

 

What in hell had John Winchester said?

 

“I’m sorry, Dean,” I spoke. I don’t remember deciding to do so, however. 

 

“It’s not your fault, Cas. I got my hopes up. Thought maybe things woulda been different, that we had some kinda chance at fixin’ things,” he said, deflecting my consolation. 

 

“It was stupid,” he added, with finality, as though the matter was really closed and that I would just leave it there, to torture him and keep him wallowing in the swell of self-hatred arising from his insides in a magnitude that I’d never witnessed. I was almost disappointed in him; he knew me better than that. I bent over and behind the bar, searching for the bottle I’d poured from earlier, and while I refilled his glass, I said the following,

 

“You were stupid for the right reasons.”

 

And Dean glanced upwards, right at me, for the first time all night, and smiled an unsure grin of disbelief and amusement, and I quickly decided to pretend that my statement was supposed to be amusing.

 

“Thanks, Cas.”

 

“Of course,” I paused, resolving to go ahead and be daring and say things I wouldn’t normally say. It seemed to work wherever Dean was concerned.

 

“I am serious, Dean. There’s nothing wrong with trying...no one can blame you for doing so. Your father is your family and there’s no changing that. I’m sure, underneath it all, he cares for you very deeply.”

 

Dean didn’t seem to agree with me, however, and shook his head no rather furiously, hinting that perhaps his previous drink was now beginning to affect him. I liked to think that it was helping him bring forward and unveil the hurt and the wounds he was trying to hard to conceal.

 

“He blamed me for Sam leaving for college.”

 

That didn’t even make any sense.

 

“He told me I’d ruined his life, that I’d taken his son away from him.”

 

What in the world was he even talking about?

 

“Everything’s my fault.”

 

How could a father saying something like that to his son? A son that had given so much up for him?

 

“I thought he cared about me too, fuck, I wanted to think that…”

 

My lack of understanding in regards to John Winchester’s intentions and methods in which he decided to carry them out prohibited me from speaking much more than a few stammered, broken syllables, so I discarded the more vocal of my options and hoped that the remaining one would suffice. Trying my hardest to convey my willingness to understand, my willingness to listen, I stared on down to Dean with a softened gaze and a face free of judgment. He needed to confess things, and maybe it was the brushing of our knuckles against each other for the second time that night, or maybe he finally trusted me enough to allow me to be his shoulder, his crutch, his source of support that took on whatever form he needed, I don’t know, but the very muscles in his face relaxed, and so did my nerves. 

 

“How do you do that?”

 

The sentence wasn’t meant to be harsh, but I nearly took it as much after its presence startled me so much. Dean’s smile reappeared just in time and convinced me that his question was sincere, free of any negative emotion, to be taken with a hint of sweetness, even, though I was still at a loss as to what it could mean. He would have to elaborate.

 

“What?” I murmured. I pretended like my own voice wasn’t so weak sounding that it hardly existed.

 

“I don’t know...you just make it so easy to talk to you about my ‘feelings’ ‘n stuff,” Dean confessed. “I’ve only known you for a couple ‘a weeks and you know more about me than my damn family does. How do you do that?”

 

I rolled my eyes, but the gesture possessed that same kind of sweetness his inquiries did, before replying,

 

“I believe you’ve asked me that before, Dean.”

 

“Humor me then.”

 

I swallowed, composed myself, and humored him, as he asked me to, because I was always there for Dean Winchester and willing to do whatever it was that he needed without any protest. 

 

“I’m an unbiased listener. That means I’ll listen to whatever is going on people’s lives because everyone needs a chance to get things that have been plaguing them off of their chests. It comes with the job, I suppose, and I enjoy being able to help people, even if it’s only in a small way.”

 

I thought my description of my job and why I enjoyed it was adequate and that it would be good enough for Dean, but he shook his head no, a sign of dissatisfaction that I didn’t comprehend.

 

“I knew that,” he sighed. “But why be so interested in me? There’s a good seven people here tonight that seem way more exciting than your ‘favorite twenty-seven year old drunk.’ I mean, just look at all those Jesus freaks!”

 

The two of us laughed at the amusement and accuracy in his depiction of the bar crowd that evening, probably picking it up from Charlie’s merciless discrimination of them or my annoyance towards the lot, but I was a little too distracted to let the moment fill me to the brim like Dean seemed to be doing. It was more than slightly embarrassing to know that even he could sense that he really was my favorite-favorite regular, favorite train wreck, favorite drunk, favorite broken soul, whatever he wanted to label himself as that night-and I did have another one of his touchy, sensitive questions to answer. It was an easy decision to keep the trend of daring honesty going, too, once I saw where it was taking us. 

 

“I didn’t think you’d notice,” I admitted, edges of my mouth dipping into my cheeks as they were colored pink. And Dean’s were doing the same.

 

“Dude, you’re passin’ up tons of tips by hangin’ out with me so much. Of course I noticed.”

 

I couldn’t deny the logic in his deduction, of course, and scratched the back of my head in a habitual manner oddly similar to my companion’s and was honest. It was beginning to tingle within me.

 

“I guess I’m more interested in you because...well…”

 

-I’ve literally been obsessing over you and your situation since the day you walked into this pub and I want to make sure you’re happy and well because there’s never been a person on this Earth that has earned such a reaction out of me like you have, and I don’t understand where those annoying feelings Charlie keeps talking about are coming from, but they’re there, and I can only hope that they’re somewhere inside you as well.-

 

That’s what I wanted to say, but I paraphrased to the best of my ability.

 

“I care about you, and I want to make sure you’re alright and well because it doesn’t seem as though you have many other people in your life that do.”

 

It looked like the honesty that was bubbling inside of me, now poured out into the small bit of atmosphere between Dean and I, was having its effects on my counterpart, because the grin already on his face became even more relaxed, even more at peace, flattered, red, and for the first time I didn’t profusely regret saying something of sentiment out loud to the one person who deserved such statements the most. He’d taken it well; he’d taken it mutually.

 

“Damn it, Cas, what am I supposed to say to that?” He exclaimed, nudging his glass dangerously towards the edge of the bar and instinctively both of our hands shot forward to save it, and we brushed more than just knuckles, and we lingered just a little longer than before, and I’d studied enough awkward exchanges in my time to know the significance of the one I was currently caught voluntarily in the middle of. 

 

“You could start by telling me what’s on your mind, or whatever will make you feel better about what happened this weekend,” I retorted, priding myself in the speed at which the reply had appeared in my mind and at how flawless it had been executed. Dean seemed to feel the same way and it nearly rendered him speechless. Perhaps it would’ve, actually, had I not passively urged him to let loose even further. I knew it was for his benefit, and so did he. 

 

“If you insist…” he released, admitting his defeat. I marked it down as a victory, a victory more courageous and worthwhile than any other I’d accomplished in my living memory.

 

Soon I found my elbows leaning up against the bar’s surface with Dean’s robust hands in between them, clasped loosely together, with his own forehead no more than six or seven inches apart from my own, and story upon story came flowing from his lips like the floodgates in his head had been torn away, blown into nonexistence, and I took every word in like it was the last I would ever hear. There were times where I struggled to remember each one, because getting lost in the whisper of a usually gruff voice was very easy to do, but if asked I could probably recite everything that was told to me in order. 

 

He’d truly been to hell and back, if he wasn’t still stuck on the journey home. Whether it be his lack of a father, the way he really did raise ‘Sammy’ to be the amazing young man Dean described him to be, what happened to their late mother, or just the constant pressure he was under from John Winchester even so many years later. He felt trapped, confined within the grasp of his estranged dad, and he’d tried to make something of a point earlier that day, but had failed miserably. His father wasn’t having any of it and Dean couldn’t understand it.

 

“He’s so far gone that he doesn’t even remember so much of what’s happened…”Dean had murmured in the middle of his recounting of his most recent family reunion. “Sam was literally right there tellin’ him that what I was saying was right and it was like he’d shut everything that he didn’t wanna hear out.”

 

He’d expressed to me, more upfront and directly than ever before, how he knew he’d failed his family, especially his brother. It was then that I could see the remnants of what John Winchester had planted within Dean’s hand: the notion that he really was worthless and had failed their family, when in reality I couldn’t think of a better person. There had been a time where I’d thought my support and admiration of Dean was illogical and had gone too far, but I knew now he deserved every bit of it and more. He was just struggling to see it.

 

“I mean, I know Sammy’s happy, so I couldn’t have screwed up too badly, but...shit, I don’t know,” he breathed. The color across his cheeks had deepened as the amount of alcohol he consumed increased, and each time he spoke he revealed more and more until he really was becoming the open book every other person I served was, the open book I’d wished he’d been upon meeting him for the first time, but now I couldn’t ignore the gratification that came with earning his trust over time. 

 

“I can’t please everyone and I’m so sick of lettin’ people down, but I’m so tired of givin’ up what Sammy wants for Dad. It’s not fair to Sam.”

 

He paused, sighed, and ran his hands across his reddening face.

“I’m not crazy right? It shouldn’t be this way...it never should’ve been this way in the first place.”

 

I shook my head no firmly, conveying my agreement as strongly as I possibly could.

 

“You’re definitely not crazy, and you’re very much correct.”

 

My answer spelled out relief across his features, and I even watched as his hands unfolded and untangled, fraying out slightly and daring my forearms that were still perched against the bar, and I tried my best to act like his shifting had meant little to me, that I hadn’t noticed the shift of his position, but whatever reaction I had was too obvious and had alerted Dean. He smirked to himself, not daring to look up at who he was silently making fun of, and soon continued on his stories. 

 

And the rest of that night was spent in intervals of serious discussion about his childhood and everything else in between that had ever irked him, laughs about anecdotes he’d told me that him and Sam had taken part in as children, awkward moments spent purposely staring in opposite directions because one of us had unintentionally moved and sparked another reaction similar to my own, and before I knew it it was the top of the hour and I was supposed to be closing up shop.

 

Dean was actually the one who reminded me of this, and had he not I would’ve kept listening far into the early morning hours until my eyes drooped shut with exhaustion. Once he finished telling me his potential career in cosmetology that Sam had suggested too many years ago, he nodded towards the clock hanging on the wall behind us with a bittersweet look on his face.

 

“Don’t you guys close up ‘round 1 o’clock ‘er somethin’?” he reminded me, slurring slightly over his words.

 

“Unfortunately,” I muttered, heart breaking over the longer of the two hand’s position over the “one” on the clock’s face. I wish I could push it backwards a good two hours so we could resume without much worry, but I could hear my long-forgotten coworker begin to shuffle tiredly out of the kitchen and knew it was too late.

 

“Nah, it’s all good. I’ve unloaded enough onto you to last another two fuckin’ years…” Dean chortled wryly, and this time I didn’t hesitate to reprimand him.

 

“I thought you understood that I enjoy being able to listen to you. We went over this earlier!”

 

He rolled his now sparkling eyes as he dug into his jacket for his wallet, most likely removing way too much money for the amount of drinks he ordered, and answered with,

 

“Doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about it. But, still, thanks for stickin’ it out and listenin’. It does feel kinda nice to get rid of all this shit.”

 

I dipped my head, not in a prideful way, but one of relief and acknowledgement. I’d done my job for the night. 

 

“Of course.”

 

Those were the last of the words that were spoken for a little while. Dean placed the money in the space between my elbows and his tantalizing hands, never taking his eyes off of mine, and for the first time I didn’t even bother counting it in my head to see how much he would deny when I tried to pay him the difference. I was too lost in the strange, indecipherable moment he’d just created by ceasing to look away and break the stare.

 

It reminded me of all those love story-oriented novels Charlie often times grew emotional over when she read during her break and how they talked about “stares that said all the words that were left unspoken,” and such a metaphor had never made all that much sense to me, but I was starting to realize the truth behind it. There might as well have been text flying from Dean’s mind to mine, yet there was some sort of language or communication gap because I wasn’t grasping all of what he was trying to tell me, or trying to imply. Eventually, because I just wasn’t understanding what I was supposed to be, that much I knew, Dean blinked, and pushed the money forward.

 

“Before you ask, you can keep the change. Take it as all the tips I’ve been cheatin’ you out of,” he said with a sly wink and a smirk, yet the usual grace he possessed in doing so faltered due to the substance running through his system. And before I could register was what occurring before my eyes, let alone ask like Dean had said, there was the adrenaline rush of hands running against my arms, barely there but the light touch so intensely present, and Dean was rising up from his seat and flinging his jacket onto his shoulders. He almost missed the left arm hole, and I grew concerned as to how impaired his vision was.

 

“Oh...t-thanks…” I stuttered, feeling as though my own senses were failing me, but I had much less valid of an excuse.

 

“Don’t mention it,” he stated as though it had been rehearsed dozens of times. He was walking towards the door now, and instead of the sound of his feet against floorboards sending excitement running through my veins, it was an omen of loss, of a goodbye that I wasn’t prepared for yet. What had that stare meant? What was I supposed to do?

 

“And thanks again Cas. Really. You’re...I-uh, thanks,” he decided on. The tail end of the sentence was said with uncertainty but he quickly shook it off.

 

“Anytime…”

 

I watched as Dean’s hand rose high into the air, and as he used the other to support himself on the doorframe, and he waved to me with an air of such casual departure that it nearly drove me mad. I felt like a piece of me was being severed while he was about to stumble drunkenly out of the door without so much as a care in the world. And yet, I could only gaze on and replicate the gesture of carefreeness. Of friendship.

 

“See ya man. Have a nice night.”

 

The doorbell rang and he was gone, taking the light and the warmth and the joy of the night along with him and I had the sudden urge to collapse inward on myself. I’d lost something there, that was for certain, and I couldn’t fight the worry I had about his state of mind and his safety in getting home. Nothing was playing out right and it all had collapsed in just a mere couple of minutes. The night had been going so well and then time had to catch up and then I had to be too awkward to understand that maybe Dean had wanted things, whatever they were,to progress just half a step further, and now I was lonely and concerned and lost. 

 

I wanted to feel his hands brush against my arms, and I wanted to see his eyes so close to mine, and I wanted to hear his laugh, and I wanted him to care about me in the way I did him. So what had gone wrong, and what was I supposed to do now?

 

“Dude, seriously?”

 

Had I been holding something, I would’ve launched it clean out of my grasp and thrown it at the source of the new voice in the room. Instead, I turned around sharply and saw Charlie there, hair now tied in a bun atop her head, with the angriest and most frustrated expression drawn into her typically relaxed and calm face. It was irking, to say the least, and the fact that its severity was directed at me was certainly unnerving. Could she tell me what I had done wrong?

 

“That’s it? That was what I’ve been waiting this whole damn time for?” She exclaimed, now approaching me and slapping a hand on my forearm. I nearly flinched from the blow’s intensity. 

 

She had to know.

 

“What-what do you mean-?”

 

She rolled her eyes, flung her arms into the air in exasperation, and looked as though she was seconds from grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me vigorously back and forth. I hoped, if she did end up doing so, it would somehow insert the solution into my brain so I could fix the disaster I’d created before it was too late, and that didn’t alot me much time. 

 

“What do I mean? Are you really that thick, Castiel Novak?”

 

Yes, I am. Please explain to me just what it is that I am so hopelessly missing.

 

“I know I said I was sorry earlier for being such an asshole about this whole Dean Winchester thing, but this isn’t me being an asshole. This is me saving your ass.”

In a flash of red hair, movement, and muttered curse words under her breath, Charlie dashed and grabbed me my trench coat, and I think I was beginning to catch on. But if I went outside, what was I supposed to do?

 

“Put this on, go outside, and don’t be so stupid,” she insisted, nearly begged. “I’ve been manning the bar and waiting tables all night and even I can tell that he was so damn into you that he could hardly stand it, and now he thinks you don’t care about him whatsoever-”

 

“I do!” I shouted suddenly, snatching my coat from her extended hands and flinging it onto my shoulders in a movement much more graceful than Dean’s earlier attempt.

 

“I KNOW! That’s why you need to go out there and show him, ya freakin’ idiot!” she shouted, more aggressively than I’d ever known her to be. I was milliseconds away from following her orders, about to dash in and around the bar and towards the door Dean had exited out of, when I felt myself freeze. I couldn’t plan ahead. I didn’t know what to do.

 

“Damn it Castiel...go!” she shrieked, expression so exasperated now a smile of disbelief and internal agony painted itself across her face. “I’m not about to let my best friend in the world miss out on such a great guy and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

 

But I was terrified and I could hardly feel nor move my limbs.

 

“What am I supposed to do?” I said, nearly whimpering, and it was a miracle that Charlie could hear me at all. 

 

She sighed, shoulders going lax, and rolled her blue eyes that were so bright and excited and correct that I could barely look away before calling out to me her famous last words before I inevitably changed my life,

 

“I’m sure you have a couple ideas.”

 

She was right, I had plenty. I’d been fostering them for weeks now and they were at their height in that moment, that moment where Dean’s staring suddenly made sense and I could translate the unspoken words between us into the same exact thing: a “yes.” Every sentence of sincerity, laugh, confession, act of kindness, touching of knuckles, and whatever else had transpired between us had built up to that singular yes, and while I felt beyond ridiculous for needing an outside source to point this revelation out to me, the stupidity’s mild burn was nothing compared to the adrenaline and excitement inside of me, almost causing me to burst open.

 

I gave Charlie Bradbury one final nod, conveying all the appreciation, gratitude, and love for her and her wise ways that I possibly could, before spinning around on my heels, wrapping my coat further around my middle, and following the exact path that Dean had upon exiting. Just as I entered the freezing cold outdoors, however, I heard her call one last thing, her statement of absolute victory over me and my denial,

 

“Told ya you guys were soulmates!”

 

I didn’t even bother turning to reply, for there were no words left to be spoken, and instead focused on the next task at hand: navigating through the winter-wonderland in an attempt to find Dean Winchester. The snow was just starting to pick up, its dusty white substance layering thin on the leafless trees around me and crunching minutely under each step I took. It was utterly freezing though and I could sense the feeling in my fingers and other extremities begin to drain, much like my patience was, but my attention dropped them instantly once I heard the loud roar of an engine trying to start. 

 

My head shifted sharply to the right, where I saw two off-yellow headlights shine their beacons of now fleeting hope into the snow globe outside of the pub, and treated it as my final destination. It was him, it had to be. I felt my legs switch into high gear and dash in that light’s direction, moving at a pace I didn’t know they were capable of achieving, and nearly slipping on the slick sidewalk with every step, but I never took my eyes off the vehicle about to depart from the parking lot until I could see the driver in the front window and wave to tell him to stop. As if by some God-send, the driver saw me, recognized me, and ceased revving his engine. 

 

It was Dean and I was about to approach his car. With him in it. After we’d just shared whatever it was we’d done earlier.

 

It felt like I’d blinked and was now bent over, face next to the driver’s side window where Dean was, cheeks pink with the cold he was just now recovering from and eyes wide with astonishment, as he was probably wondering ‘why the hell that insane bartender guy was so keen on talking to me.’ But then I heard Charlie inside my head and watched my breath fog up Dean’s window until he got the message and rolled it down. With it came the last of my coherent thoughts. I was in unknown territory now, no longer in the safe, confining walls of the pub.

 

Dean looked on at me with his mouth converting into a small smile of curiosity, relief, yet a little twinge of surprise, and seeing that I was in no shape to initiate anymore conversation, he took the reigns.

 

“What, just can’t let me tip you? Came to hand over the excess cash?” he teased, laughing at his own nagging joke while still maintaining the desire to know what in the world had possessed me to brave the cold and speak to him. I didn’t even have a good answer myself, so I settled on the first emotion to cross my mind: 

 

my worry.

 

“No, not today. I just don’t think you’re in any condition to drive in such weather,” I admitted. I wasn’t lying in the least, and Dean knew this, but he also knew the significance lying in wait under such polite and friendly words. I had no intention of being friendly.

 

“Oh, is that so?” he taunted, but I could see him unbuckle his seatbelt with a dull click before continuing,

 

“Is Castiel Novak offering me a ride home?”

 

Feeling the moment, feeling the butterflies, and no longer really feeling all that cold, I went along with his little game, knowing that Charlie would be proud.

 

“It’s not really an offer, I’m afraid,” I retorted. Soon after I backed up a step, because Dean was about to exit his vehicle. I could see his hands linger around the inside door handle, the same hands that had lingered around mine, and I shivered with something other than the cold.

 

“I wasn’t gonna deny it anyways,” he chuckled. The black car door opened and closed with a click and a loud slam, and then there he was, standing inches away from me with red cheeks and full lips upturned into a smirk of knowledge, of preparedness for what he wanted to come, and it was beginning to feel like we were in a scene from one of Charlie’s romance novels. The snow and the chilled air served as a sufficient backdrop and I couldn’t shake all her tormenting about bloody soulmates away, so I embraced it, much like Dean’s warm, soothing left hand embraced my own and how my right hand found its own way onto the small of his waist and hung there, unsure and terrified and immobile because surely I was having a heart attack and was about to melt into nothingness on the spot. 

 

Yet, before my heart could collapse entirely and before I could ruin the moment for the second time over, Dean’s brain made one last coherent, intelligent decision and moved in the best way he possibly could: closer. 

 

And just like the the journey to his now silent vehicle had transpired, I blinked and he was there, lips moving slowly against my own in a way so tantalizing I felt like I’d blown away in the wind. I believe he attempted to be soft, but there still was substance in his veins, and as a result the whole exchange turned out to be very tenth grade, but I might as well have marked it down as the single best instance of my life.

 

For those few moments where his fingers laced together with my own, where he tilted his head and I could memorize the very ridges of the lips that were pressed up on mine, and where my fingers dug into the freezing leather of his jacket, I could forget about the world. I didn’t have to worry about understanding everything, I could just be, and that moment was the best state of just being that I could ever have been in. I could feel each sigh of his breath against my own skin and hear every minute noise he made, relishing in the fact that I was pushing such sounds from within. I loved the way his hands felt and I loved the fact that he wanted this too and that I wasn’t crazy. This was okay.

 

And then I blinked, and it was over. He fell away, after lingering for but a second to touch down, rather clumsily, on my upper lip, and then stood back in his original stance, a few inches away with his hand still in mine and his eyes still locked onto my own. I was far too high in the ghostly, snow-filled clouds to see that it was my turn to say something, to make some sort of move, because I had promised him a ride, but Dean Winchester knew me well enough at that point to tell that I would need a little push to reconnect with reality.

 

“We ready? Shouldn’t be out too late, or we’ll freeze to death.”

 

He was so intoxicated that I almost laughed, which would’ve painfully strange after having shared an act even more intimate than our endless stares from earlier, but the happiness lighting up his features, brightly enough to illuminate the darkness one one o’clock in the morning, was enough to make my head go blank with a bliss I couldn’t define nor describe. I knew, despite the drinks that I’d supplied him with, that this was for real and that such a bliss was overwhelmingly mutual. It was written all over his face, in the creases of his mouth, and across the lines of his hand’s palm. 

 

“Y-yeah...we’re ready,” I whispered, drawing my fingers slowly out of his, though no sense of loss came with the departure this time, and waited until he was just about seated within the passenger’s seat to enter the vehicle myself. My vision darted toward the pub one last time, perhaps to see if I could catch a glimpse of Charlie, since I owed her the biggest of thank yous, but the pub was dark and the parking lot was barren and empty. She’d left, probably giggling about whatever she thought would occur between me and Dean in the minutes and hours that followed her invigorating speech about my stupidity and my destiny, and I hoped she was having as good of a night as I was. 

 

“Hey, Cas,” Dean mumbled suddenly. It was so strange to see him so talkative, the new personality brought on by his choice of beverages, but I appreciated it then. It made his persona and general makeup much easier to decipher in that time of urgency.

 

“Hm?” was my reply, still dazed and about ready to dissolve upon meeting Dean’s wide, romance novel-worthy eyes. 

 

“Don’t ever change.”

 

There was one last “act of intimacy” before I started his car, marveling in the appearance of Dean’s car and the fact that I was inside it under such circumstances as I did so, and we were driving to wherever it was he dwelled, my companion spewing haphazard directions as we went and I struggled to follow them accurately, but he didn’t seem to mind, so neither did I. The sound of snow touching down lightly against the windshield, Dean’s gentle breathing, and a startlingly familiar REO Speedwagon song playing from the radio was enough to keep me joyously occupied for hours upon hours, and I didn’t care if we ever reached Dean’s house.

And the feeling of Dean’s hand in my own once more told me that he didn’t care much either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry for the wait on this one. I was actually at a concert a good four and a half hours away on Friday night and the time for writing just seemed to escape me this past week, so the bulk of this chapter was written today. I hope you can forgive whatever foolish spelling/grammar mistakes are left. Also, I know this is a MONSTER in length, so if you read all the way through, hats off to you! I wanted to get this very important installment done and published as a whole so the next final part will make more sense. It's an epilogue, I suppose, and it's sure to be just lovely.  
> Thanks to everyone for the support, and I hope I've pleased you thus far!


	8. Thirteen Months, Two Weeks, Six Days, Six Hours, and Fifty-Eight Minutes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! Updating early since it was finished just now and it's the final installment.

DEAN

 

Until recently, I hated the cold and everything that came with it: the snow piling on heavy atop my car, the heating bill, the layers upon layers of clothing I needed to wear just to walk a few feet outdoors, the like. Winter was always such a pain in the ass to me and I counted the days and weeks until it was over, rejoiced at the sight of green grass underneath the troublesome layers of white, and I wasn’t even that big of a fan of Christmas, partly because my family had never been very keen on celebrating it, but that was besides the point. Overall, the month of November all the way through the tail end of March were torturous for me, always had been.

 

Except nowadays.

 

No, I still don’t like the cold, chilly weather and I don’t particularly like going outside. The bland and bare trees outside aren’t magical to me, nor are they any kind of beautiful, and I still went just about mad hearing the same damn three Christmas songs play over and over again on every radio station the moment Thanksgiving had passed, but there had been additions to my life that made the treacherous season exponentially more enjoyable, and now there wasn’t a day throughout the entire year that I didn’t appreciate them. It was hard not to, if I’d ever bothered to try otherwise, since I saw them each and every day without fail.

 

That day in particular was sure to be a good one. I could tell by the shimmering light bouncing off the snow blanketing the window sill and into the room, touching down on my face and waking me up in a way I thought was only possible in the movies: nicely. It couldn’t be any later than eight in the morning, and with one blurry glance towards the clock perched on my nightstand, I saw the sun had woken me up a whole two minutes before my alarm, and I frowned. Then, groaning in annoyance and stretching my arms into the air, pushing my body deepers into the covers as I did so, I felt the form of another press further against me, legs entangled with mine, arm wrapped haphazardly around my middle, and grinned sleepily, clumsily. The old expression of grumpiness had vacated my face, and it was definitely going to be a good day.

 

I did need someone to start it with, though, and even though the sleeping figure next me had only arrived there a good six hours prior, I was lonely and still a little irritated over the my lost two minutes of rest, so I was selfish and leaned in closer, kissing the sleeping pout off their face for it only to be replaced by a more intense, conscious one.

 

“Dean...what’re you…”

 

Their legs rubbed against mine, just now noting the awkward and very much inconvenient position we’d fallen into the night before, and tried to draw away from my grasp in a fit of mumbles and moans of disruption. I should’ve felt guilty for being such an asshole, for they needed the rest far more than I did, but it was so warm in the heap of flannel sheets and skin and foggy memories of whatever we’d done in the earlier morning hours that I held them still and planted another press of my lips just below their ear. It didn’t do much to ease the aggravation.

 

“...what time is it...too early...”

 

Finally, abandoning my efforts and pulling away from my sleep-deprived partner and rolling my eyes in defeat, I answered, glumly,

 

“Jesus, good morning to you, too, Cas…”

 

My whining was half-heartedly remedied by a weak frown into my bottom lip, and despite my false attempt at sounding at all vexatious, I couldn’t help but relish in the light grind of stubble against my lower cheek and chin and the beginnings of consciousness fading back into my partner’s eyes. The same sunlight that had woken me earlier had even more magical effects on those eyes, and just like that the day was destined to not only be good, but maybe even great.

 

Everyday that I got to wake up with Castiel beside me had the potential to be great, of course.

 

“I got home at two in the morning, Dean,” He reprimanded me, his peevish tone of voice not enough to distract me from his shifting, until he was nearly on top of me, hands against my wrists with a smile struggling to appear along his pale face, an expression contrary to the mood he was trying to convince me he was in.

 

“That’s not my fault,” I retorted, pursing my lips and just waiting to see what he’d say. 

 

“It’s not mine either. It’s entirely not my fault that Charlie Bradbury spilled one massive tub of blue cheese dressing all over the kitchen floor and that she demanded Kevin and I help her clean it up, just as I was leaving.”

 

Cas sighed after his piece, and had it been any other time of day I would’ve felt concern over his aggravation, because usually he was “employee of the century” at all times and wouldn’t have complained about the salad dressing fiasco much at all, but he hated mornings like I hated the cold, and they brought out the worst in him. It was funny to me, though, because the worst wasn’t even that bad, and while he helped me stay warm in the winter I only proceeded to intentionally piss him off during his least favorite couple of hours. 

 

“And it certainly is not my fault that you decided to keep me up even later than usual, you know,” he added with a devilish twinge to his tone that I only heard during the most compromising of times, and it earned a hearty laugh from within my chest, a laugh that was free of all traces of guilt.

 

“Don’t act like you’re actually pissed about it, man,” I sneered, a little meanly, but Cas got the point and rolled his sparkling eyes and I fought hard not to get lost in them, in their embodiment of all things warm and safe and gentle. Besides, there was a dull beep ringing from the opposite corner of the bed, my assigned corner, and it was officially eight o’clock. Cas was the first to remark about the time, as usual.

 

“You woke up earlier than usual today.” It was said with innocence and observation and I couldn’t help but giggle, the sound moving Cas’s figure up and down slightly, since he was still perched lightly atop my middle, and he waited for my response.

 

“Just by two minutes, I’m not dying or anything.”

 

“That’s good to hear,” Cas answered, with a level of sweetness and honesty that only he could achieve, before lowering himself down to press his lips against the corners of my own, breath warm and smile large, and he released his grip on my wrists as he spoke once more into my cheek,

 

“This does mean that you have to go to work though...unfortunately.”

 

Judging by the way he was teasing me, he wouldn’t be mourning the loss much and would probably be spending the hours of my absence in pajamas and in and out of naps. Soon my free hand found its way into his hair, but he knew better. I was distracted too easily, got carried away at the drop of a pin, at the brief press of lips, and he was right: work existed and needed me there at the top of the next hour.

 

“N’ugh…” was my choice of grumbles as I pried myself out of the soothing solace of sheets and the familiar grasp of Cas’s arms and legs. In a few painful moments I’d emerged in full and was stretching my arms upward once more, causing my back to give a loud crack and creak of bones being dislodged from the night’s position, when I heard a snicker from behind me and turned around on a shaky heel.

 

“What?” I mumbled, rubbing sleep from my eyes and distorting the sight of Cas’s cheeks rising high into his face, intruding on the bags under his eyes, as he plain old laughed at me, and I was at a complete loss for what he found so amusing after being so grumpy seconds before. He would have to enlighten me, and he did so by holding up a finger-I wasn’t keen on waiting for his explanation; why the hell was he laughing?- and bending over the mattress to retrieve something. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t watch, and that there weren’t rather distinct red marks lining the skin around his spine and shoulders, remnants of the events that had transpired in the hours before, and I realized that he did have every right to be tired. 

 

Thankfully, the blush that accumulated along my cheeks and the bridge of my nose had mostly dissipated by the time Cas had reached whatever it was he’d been looking for and had turned around.

 

“You probably need to put these on before you go out anywhere,” he informed me, the sadistic humor in his voice mixing with his general helpfulness until I couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or not, and just shook my head no with exasperation. Yes, I hadn’t noticed my lack of under or outer garments until seeing my work drawn out across Cas’s back, but it didn’t serve as much of an issue to me.

 

“Nah, I’m changing into ‘fresher’ clothes, thank you very much-”

 

“Well then I at least suggest drawing the blinds. While the light is nice, I highly doubt you want the outside seeing you in such a state.”

 

There was surely a snide edge to his words, sharp and sarcastic, a trait that he’d picked upon only recently and while I knew I was the sole suspect to blame, it still drove me crazy, and in a rush of muttered curse words and flushed faces and extremities, I snatched the blinds in both hands and pulled them tightly closed. My urgency and out of character embarrassment did little to stop Cas’s laughter of course, and he proceeded to mock me and my idiocy all while I threw on clean boxers and my usual uniform when traveling off to work: my “company-issued” pale blue button down, dark jeans, and the socks I found at the bottom of my drawer. I made an effort to ignore the deep, ocean eyes I knew were staring me down at that very moment, pretend as though their owner wasn’t in the same state of bareness I’d been in as I revealed myself to the world outside, but was failing miserably. 

 

“Will you be able to stop by today?” Cas eventually asked once he’d ceased chuckling and his amusement was reduced to nothing more than a small grin.

 

“Yeah, probably. Bobby said he doesn’t need me for very long today, just until around 4 o’clock I think.”

 

Cas’s smile deepened as his gaze softened, stretching as he spoke,

 

“I’ll look forward to it then,” he replied and stretched forward, showing a little more of his not-so-clothed figure than I believed he’d intended to, and it was my turn to laugh a little. Though whether it was at his state or the genuine happiness he still felt over the idea of me visiting him at work, I didn’t know.

 

“Gotta keep up that Thursday tradition, right?” I suggested with a raise of my eyebrows. I’d made my way over to his side of the bed after buttoning the last of my shirt and stuffed it as neatly as I could into my pants, feeling satisfied enough with my appearance and knowing Bobby, basically my family member made boss, wouldn’t even notice the degree of orderliness in which my shirt was tucked. 

 

“You came at least every three days, Dean. It was only a tradition for the first two weeks or so…”

 

I smirked, looking down to my feet as I laced up on my shoes while knowing my expression was driving Cas up a wall, so I decided to top it off with the most smart-aleck statement I could possibly think of on the spot like that.

“But I was your favorite regular, right?”

 

Cas faces sunk just as my spirits lifted even higher than they’d been all that morning, the horror and defeat in his expression oddly rewarding,

 

“Goodness, I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop bringing that up,” he groaned, the articulateness of his sentence a great contrast to how much I was bugging him. “I’d made Charlie swear not to tell you about that.”

 

I clamped Cas hard on his back, the sound echoing throughout the room, dismissing his troubles and silently thanking Charlie for letting me in on Cas’s little description of me so many months back. It served as a great bargaining chip and annoyance to hang over my rather poetic companion’s head, though it didn’t seem to be quite as effective that morning since he was still willing to pull me in closer one last time and lock lips, deeper than I’d expected, with his top lip slotting between both of mine and threatening to pry them open, and I began to doubt my previous statement about him being the one to pull me from such distractions like the one we were presently caught in the middle. That would have to be my job then, but I let it continue a little longer than my counterpart would’ve had it been any other, more typical day.

 

And I had been able to tell that the day was not typical from the moment the sun had gleamed through the window, so I suppose Cas’s general mood and willingness to go a little too far for eight in the morning shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but no one would’ve been able to completely handle his hands snaking their way around my waist, his brute force in prying my lips open, and I felt lost and engulfed in a way only Castiel could make feel safe and okay.

 

I guess, in the end, my shirt-tucking job didn’t mean much, since I would have to redo it anyways momentarily, and my mind was very far from its state as a few shameful sighs were pushed from somewhere deep within my throat, a place that wasn’t supposed to make noise in the first place, as familiar fingers snaked their way underneath my button down’s fabric. They latched onto whatever skin they could find, sending goosebumps up my chest and back down my arms, and Cas’s breath still was reminiscent of the alcohol from the previous night, sharp and overwhelming to not only the taste but to the touch, and I wondered if it was still affecting his train of thought and logic. 

 

The grind of his stubble increased from soft to rough as the amount of pressure put in the lack of space between our lips grew until Cas himself uttered an exhale of breath so uncharacteristically dirty that my damn hips bucked. This surely wasn’t good; this was not the best of ways to make a day productive, but not a single ounce of me planned on protesting. And as the ridges of his lips rubbed up and down against my own, tongue entering and exiting my agape mouth as it pleased, I thought perhaps work could wait. Like I said, Bobby wouldn’t notice whatever state of neatness I arrived in, and he surely wouldn’t be bothered if I showed up a little late then, correct? All I had to make sure of was that he couldn’t see the pinkened skin Cas was beginning to suck on, furiously, like he was the one on a time limit, and damn did my hips fucking roll-

 

Ring!

 

“What the hell-”

 

Ring!

 

“I believe something is vibrating in the pocket of your jeans, Dean,” Cas explained to me, instantly pulling away from his favored spot on my neck just above my collarbone, acting as though we’d done nothing but pass by in the hall, complete strangers. He had a knack for immediately shutting down whatever kind of energy he accumulated during such exchanges.

 

“Damn it...yeah, I know…” I muttered angrily and I arched my arm backwards to reach into my pants’ back pocket where my phone was ringing profusely and at the most inconvenient of times. Without reading the number displayed across its screen I answered the call, breathing my introduction heavily and awkwardly into the speaker until I was sure whoever was on the other end would be entirely convinced that I’d just been running some sort of marathon.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Ay, Dean, it’s Bobby. Just callin’ to ask a favor of ya.”

 

I held in my groan and Cas, noticing my aggravation, began busying himself with re-buttoning the first few buttons at the top of my shirt, adjusting my collar as he did so. 

 

“Yeah...yeah Bobby, what’s up?” I replied. 

 

“Well, first off, have ya been runnin’ for yer life recently? Sounds like you’re about to cough up a damn lung, son.”

 

Bobby was not a soft-talker, did not have an inside-voice, so Cas heard the length of his comment and chuckled proudly to himself as his fingers danced along the back of my neck, flicking my collar down. I gave him a rather dubious look but it did little to dampen his spirits, and I went back to the quickly failing conversation.

 

“No...no...just got in a run this morning, that’s all.” It seemed believable until I said it and I was immediately wincing at my diminished lying skills. I blamed Cas and his forever innocent ways for corrupting me, and yes I realize how little sense that makes. 

 

“When the hell didja pick up running?” Bobby exclaimed, but then seemed to think differently about the question, and continued, 

 

“No, whatever, I don’t really care. I’m just callin’ to ask if you can close up shop today. Ellen says she needs some help down at the Roadhouse ‘n all, and I thought you’d be willin’ to pitch in an extra couple ‘a hours. I’d pay ya!”

 

I grimaced and bit my lower lip, a way much less sensual than what had been done in the minutes earlier, and immediately my eyes flicked down to Cas. Predictably, he’d heard the proposed favor and while he didn’t look entirely happy about it, he nodded his head as an “okay,” and I mouthed a silent,

 

“You sure?”

 

He nodded once more, mouthed nothing and spoke not a word, and I pretended like my guilt had diminished for the time-being.

 

“Uh, sure, Bobby. I can do that,”I agreed, solemnly. “What time were you thinking?”

 

“Eight o’clock okay? I got an appointment at quarter to eight, shouldn’t take much longer than that, and I’m sure you can handle it.”

 

Eight o’clock was better than never. The pub didn’t close until one in the morning, this I knew for a fact, so I could easily carve out some time to see Cas. It would be even more similar to the old Thursdays.

 

“Sounds good.”

 

“Thanks Dean,” Bobby said, and while I would’ve been far more reluctant to agree to his slightly painful request, the things Bobby had done for me over the years far outweighed four extra hours of work, so I held my tongue, much like Cas was holding my hips loosely in both of his hands, staring blankly at the very uninteresting ceiling. 

 

“Not a problem,” was my answer, and I was about to say my goodbyes when Bobby beat me to the punch, adding one last remark that made me want to reach through the phone and physically detract my acceptance of his favor. 

 

“Tell Castiel I said hello, will ya? Hope he’s keepin’ ya busy.”

 

“Hello, Mr. Singer!”

 

I was too busy gazing at Cas with betrayal and utter disbelief and I hardly heard Bobby’s chorus of hearty laughs and chortles as he said his true goodbye and hung up, the line going dead. 

 

“Thanks. You’ve just given him three months worth of material to bug the hell outta me with.”

 

Cas beamed, and it was moments like then where I realized that while he might’ve corrupted me with his innocence, I’d infested him with my rudeness and my sarcasm, and sometimes it really did catch me off guard.

 

“I was merely returning the hello, Dean. Nothing more than common courtesy.”

 

And I would’ve socked him right there, given him a piece of my mind, but I happened to care very deeply for the blue-eyed, slim-toned, eternally awkward yet now slightly more socially able, gentle, and simply kind bartender and goddamn angel lying pretty underneath me, so I settled on ruffling his hair and releasing him from my death grip. It was ten minutes past eight now, and I needed to get going.

 

“I’ll stop by later tonight, I promise,” I said, grabbing my coat that was hung near the bed, because upon purchasing my first apartment for two, one has to give up the luxury of having a door more than ten feet from your bed, and getting ready to leave for good that time, no more surprises or distractions or dangerously intoxicating hands along my waist to keep me from going to work. I did intend on keeping my promise though, since I hadn’t paid a visit to the pub in a long while and it just so happened to be a place of rather large worth to Castiel and I. 

 

“I know. I’ll see you then,” he answered, sitting up fully in bed and unintentionally showing off the front of him and all the places I’d left my fingerprints a few hours prior. I didn’t dare look for very long though in fear of succumbing once more.

 

“Get some sleep, m’kay?”

 

He nodded, and then added once I was halfway out the door and almost successful in my departure,

 

“I love you, Dean.”

 

The heat erupting along my face stung, such that it restricted my ability to speak, and all I could croak out was a weak yet overwhelmingly sincere and meaningful 

 

“I know.”

 

and I knew that Cas knew what I meant. I loved him more than I’d ever known how, and I closed the door behind me quietly and with as much care as I could muster, as though the volume of the door slam would make the prospect of a long day ahead of both Castiel and I any easier to swallow. I had just about twelve hours to go and I could already feel the subconscious tug of the pub pulling me out of the lengthy hallway that lead to the lobby of our apartment building and away from the route to my car. 

 

I had to get through that day though, and upon reaching my favorite method of transportation, her surface shining and freshly cleaned after I’d given her the usual hand-cleaning at Bobby’s, I concluded that it wasn’t so bad. Driving to Bobby’s to work on cars all day wasn’t too bad, eating lunch with the best father figure I’d ever had wasn’t too bad, and driving no more than fifteen miles to Castiel’s place of work as often as possible wasn’t too bad either. In fact, when I thought about it, as I drived out of the parking garage, waving to a few familiar faces as I went, probably halfway recognizing their features from the pub, this life was exponentially not as bad as it had been just over a year ago, and that was a thought that could get me through the next twenty five years, let alone the upcoming few hours.

 

I knew it was cheesy, something straight out of all those damned chick-flick movies Cas’s partner-in-bartending-crime Charlie Bradbury had gotten him temporarily hooked on, but I couldn’t help but routinely think back to that fateful Sunday night and reminisce over how sheerly crazy and revolutionary it had been. The expected outcome of what was such a dreadfully anticipated day had been thrown out the window, balled up into an unrecognizable mass and forgotten, all because I’d come crawling back to the one person in my life who seemed to be willing to hear me out, let me lean on them, and all because that person had been feeling a bit more daring than usual.

 

I could still pick out the very streets we’d driven down, while my hand had been cringingly, yet delicately, glued to the top of his thigh as he transported me back home. The cheesy and probably intrusive act had been done out of my complete state of “wastedness,” of course, and for twelve torturous hours during the following day I went over each element of the exchange over and over again in my blotched and scattered memory, horrified over whether Cas had really wanted to do what he’d done. My anxieties and fears, however, were eased the next evening when I got a brief phone call from the recipient of what I knew was probably my worst kiss to date asking if I was feeling okay and, as a side note, making sure I would be coming back to visit him again once I was feeling up to speed and willing to consume significantly less alcohol. 

 

“It’s not that I didn’t enjoy our time yesterday, I just think it would be more beneficial to you if there was less alcohol in your system,” is how I believe it was phrased.

 

I’d agreed wholeheartedly and with the stupidest of grins on my face. 

 

More milestones had come to pass in my life since gaining my best friend within those strange, strange circumstances: I’d gotten a job at Bobby’s, a real one this time. To bring in some extra cash, Bobby had begun advertising his mechanic skills throughout town and, shockingly, people flooded his near-hut of a garage, plowing through the overgrown plant life surrounding the structure because apparently his prices were significantly lower than the average mechanic’s, but he didn’t bother finding a basis for comparison. We both enjoyed the chance to do something with our hands and I had money in my pockets and something solid to stand on underneath my feet. I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of reassurance it supplied.

 

That reassurance didn’t stop there though. Two weeks after he’d arrived back home, Sam returned back to Stanford, but we’d departed on better terms than the previous separation. After Dad and I’s episode, I believe it was Bobby who’d filled my younger brother on the extent of what had transpired throughout my childhood, behind the closed doors of Sam’s own ignorance, and he’d begged me to let him help me help Dad. So the two of us entered John Winchester into rehabilitation after earning some sort of half-coherent agreement to try, “for his annoying as all hell boys,” something I never pictured happening outside of the dreams I kept private, let alone with my once-estranged brother, and it lasted ten days. A record, I tried to boast, but just like Bobby’s tire-rotation prices, we didn’t have any baseline for comparison.

 

Sam left two days after Dad dropped out, saying he wasn’t in the mood to be trapped in another episode of “Family Feud: Drunk Edition,” and while I couldn’t blame him, it felt as though he was tearing open a wound that had just begun to heal upon his arrival. He promised me to stay in better touch nowadays though, and he delivered, after giving me his younger brother advice. According to Sammy, Dad did nothing for me, and if he was still at home he would physically force me away from his very entity. I didn’t doubt his ability to achieve this, because even though Sam was a bit lanky, he had a good two and a half inches of height on me, but I pushed his suggestion away as far as I could once he was gone on the jetplane, into the sky, and into his future success. 

 

It only took about another month to realize my less aged yet painfully more logical brother was right, and only another week after that to take his advice in full and build that wall of separation between father and son. I suppose a key piece in realizing there wasn’t much left to salvage between the two of us was his utter disgust and appallment at the fact that I was seeing someone, someone that he did not approve of in the least, and, much like Sam had given his ultimatum, my father gave me his. It consisted of many slurs and phrases I dare not repeat, and the stench of liquor rumbling deep within his throat. And, for the first time in my life, I truly got sick off the smell and decided to not put myself through it anymore. 

 

I walked out.

 

It had been months since I’d seen my father in person, going on a year, actually, and while I sent him monthly checks to make sure he had some sort of roof over his head, and while I still thought about what exactly it was that I was leaving behind (before I met Cas, the definition of family was something that I ashamedly held onto, and it was a hard thing to have torn from one’s grasp.), it didn’t hurt quite as bad as I’d expected it to. It was liberating at times, especially when those times were spent with elbow grease and a mix of oil and sweat running down my forehead, or hearing of all the wild campus stories Sam had to tell me, usually only consisting of something a professor told him, because he was never truly able to shake the “teachers’ pet “ title since at least the fourth grade, or leaning against the bar I’d come to know so well in my signature spot, chatting up the redhead waitress in a way that was entirely casual and friendly while I snuck every chance I could get to talk to the dark-haired, blue-eyed bartender,

 

or, when those times were spent in my favorite way, wrapped up in the sheets I had to so sadly leave earlier with legs intertwined in the way they had been that morning with that same bartender I’d come to know and love so much. Those occasions were still mind-blowing, over a year later, and I just couldn’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that he was mine, and vice versa, and that I was happy in a way that I still cannot even begin to describe.

 

It’s not an excited kind of happy. My blood didn’t pump swiftly through my veins and arteries and there isn’t some life-changing event waiting to happen at the end of each day. It wasn’t the kind of happy I felt during those compromising situations I’d mentioned earlier, though that sort was definitely new and very much appreciated. It wasn’t even the calm sort of happy, like the time Cas and I traveled to Virginia to see the beaches because apparently he’d never gotten the chance to touch ocean water and nothing could beat the look in his equally as oceanic eyes when he stepped barefoot into the soggy sand along the shore. No, it wasn’t any of those kinds of happiness specifically, it was some kind of inexplicable mix of all of them together.

 

It was the simple joy of assurance, of safety, of just be able to be and live in peace and enjoy all the little things that came with that. Sometimes it was a Hallmark kind of life, like our beach adventures and all the meals Cas liked to have outside, perched on a sheet under a tree, sometimes it was something far more racy and intense than that, and sometimes just the chance to look at Castiel at work was enough to turn my insides to mush and my head go blank with love that 13 months, two weeks, six days, and a good twenty minutes past seven hours ago I would’ve told you didn’t exist. That’s what Castiel Novak could do to a person, I suppose.

 

I pulled into Bobby’s with a smile that day, still enjoying the particularly bright sun that was seeping through my windshield and warming my car’s interior, and probably looked a little odd, seeing as though I was working an extra four hours that day, but the whole “appreciating the little things in life that you have” thing was new to me and still hadn’t lost its magic. It was another way in which Cas had corrupted me with his innocence, but the after effects were so positive and heartwarming, literally, that I doubted I would have any trouble learning how to deal. If he managed to live with me and my impure ways, as it had been phrased before, I could handle a little bit of good influence in my life. Hell, I looked forward to it each day that my eyes opened.

 

And there is so much to look forward to now, all because of that one person giving me the necessary edge to get up and make something of myself. All because the soft around the edges, light-speaking, gentle, sometimes gauche yet always inexplicably intuitive man behind the bar had taken an interest in me. All because seeing his smiling, easy going, and forever soothing face was expected, normal, and I could look forward to it at end of each day without fail, without any screaming matches or nerves or anxieties of any sort. No strings attached; he was a different kind of family.

 

And so, at the end of it all, I do love Castiel Novak. I truly can’t deny how good it feels to be someone’s favorite, and I’ll never get over how fortunate I am to be able to say that out of all the crazy, screwed up people with the equally as destructive problems begging to be dealt with, out of all the middle-aged suburban woman, drunk nuns and other men and women of vocation, rowdy college frat boys, and all the typical bar creeps and possible criminals Cas deals with on a daily basis, I am his favorite regular.

He sure as hell is mine, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow...did I actually finish something? All 141 pages of it? It truly is an accomplishment for me to have done so, since it's been so long since any of my projects have been completed, fanfiction or not. I owe it to everyone who's read, left kudos, or commented, of course; remember that this would not have happened without you! I hope you all found the end to be satisfying enough, thank you for all the support, and check back soon for more potential Destiel stories! I can never get tired writing about Dean and Cas's "profound bond." :)

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this on Wattpad, simply because I'm more familiar with the site, but I'm trying to get the hang of this new-fangled ao3. Please, feel free to reprimand me for any misuse I may unintentionally enact, but remember that it is entirely accidental and done so with pretty embarrassing ignorance. This place is scary. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this weird little AU I've made and feedback is greatly and truly appreciated. Updates are random and annoyingly inconsistent.


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